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#i do not think any of these are inherently flawed i think i am VERY picky

unpretty · 1 year

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if we're doing vibe talk I'm hoping that its not weird that I remember this but iirc you posted something ages ago about trying a really cute looking vibe that looked like a little red purse mirror. did that work out in the long run? or did it turn out more of a looks over quality type situation?

you're probably thinking of one of my bellesa toys, specifically the bellesa airvibe

in retrospect i don't know why i bought this. i don't like internal stimulation or direct clit contact. direct contact hurts and if anyone but me does it i'll stab them. however i did eventually come around to it once i figured out i have to work my way up to it. it's not a daily driver or anything because no toy that requires self-foreplay ever will be for me, but it's great for when i'm being extra self-indulgent. also great to use during sex. big fan of that. top-tier if you're a fan of humping people's legs. the only problem is trying to hit the controls sucks. i hear they have a new one with a remote and i might buy it if it goes on sale.

so i had this thought of like "okay so what if i got one that doesn't get inserted but still has the clit part" which is why i bought the bellesa diskreet air

however. the little... suctiony bit. is shaped ever-so-slightly different. you wouldn't think it would be enough to make a difference. but for me it made a huge difference. i basically never use this. RIP.

so then i thought "okay i'll just get this version of this that's just a regular vibrator basically" so i bought the bellesa diskreet vibe

the shape of this... i hate it. it's so awkward to use. it feels so loud. it sticks out so much. the soft surface doesn't work for me at all. the vibrations are so diffuse. i need something precise and unyielding. why is it shaped like a tongue. it works in an emergency (other vibe batteries are dead) but at what cost.

you'd think i would have learned my lesson but then the bellesa pebble was on sale

why is this picture so fucking dramatic. anyway it also comes with a charging case that looks exactly like the other charging cases. it definitely works better for me than the diskreet air, but this is where i finally accepted that suction toys in general are too much of an ordeal for me. like. it's designed to form a seal but i am Not About That. i hate that. the opening isn't big enough for that to be good for me. and when it doesn't form a seal it's loud as fuck.

anyway late last month i used all my reward points from buying all these vibes to order the new bellesa stim

it's not here yet but wish me fucking luck because apparently i need it

#original #you'd think i would know myself well enough by now but i do not #i do not think any of these are inherently flawed i think i am VERY picky #and have VERY specific needs #which i do NOT take into consideration when i see something pretty #listen: have you considered all of the bellesa toys i HAVEN'T bought #because i at least know better than to buy myself a rabbit or wand of any kind

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demilypyro · 7 months

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I'm doing better lately.

I think a lot of my self loathing I've posted about over the years came from this... sense of powerless disappointment in myself. Growing up in special ed, knowing I wasn't a normal kid, knowing there were things I just wasn't capable of... it had always gnawed at my ability to love myself, or even respect myself. When I was younger this lack of respect for myself manifested as essentially giving up on my own wants, and just trying to make myself useful to others. My life sucked, might as well help others with theirs, was the idea. But this led me to just neglect my own mental health for years. It wasn't sustainable.

But even as I tried to correct that, as I tried to take charge of my life by transitioning and getting a job I liked, I ran into pitfalls. As I tried to improve myself, I often ended up overshooting and perceiving any trait that wasn't perfect as a flaw I had to work to fix. It was this high-strung state where if I still saw anything wrong about myself, it meant I wasn't working hard enough. It was all another reason to hate myself. I was stressing myself out, and I was no closer to being rid of my self loathing.

It took time for me to find the balance between who I wanted to be and who I could be. I had to learn the difference between flaws I had to fix to be able to like myself, and "flaws" that were really just personality traits, things that made me who I was. I had to learn that loving myself wasn't about making myself good enough to be worthy of love, but that being worthy of love is something inherent. That self-improvement isn't about proving to yourself that you can do it, but something you do because you owe it to yourself. And that's an easy thing to say, but a very different thing to internalize. It took me some years.

I'm in a better place lately. I like who I am. I'm still working on myself, but I like where it's going. Idk.

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stolitzsings · 4 months

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This is a sort of response to a post I've seen floating around, drawing parallels between the chains in Blitz’s trip that bind him to Stolas and the chains that bind Husk, Angel, and Fizz to Alastor, Valentino, and Mammon respectively. I'm not commenting on that post directly bc I avoid Discourse (tm) at all costs for the sake of my health, and I don’t want to get drawn into an unproductive argument that will mess with my anxiety for a week. I'm not trying to start a fight, just get my thoughts out on why I feel that comparison is inaccurate, and hopefully provide some helpful context and nuance.

So! Let's start with a few disclaimers! First of all, I'm not going to debate the moral purity of any of these characters. I just don't think it's an interesting or valuable critique. On a related note, I am not trying to excuse any of their behavior. I'm happy to admit that my favorite characters in this show have hurt people and are sometimes total assholes. Stolas treated Blitz very poorly at the beginning of their relationship, frequently pushed or even ignored boundaries, and was just kind of a dick about things. My objection to a direct comparison between Stolas and the other characters mentioned above isn't because I think Stolas hasn't done anything wrong; I just think that saying they're similar without further clarification or commentary ignores the nuance of the situation.

Read on below the cut, it's gonna be another long one folks!

Let's start by examining the "agreements" forged by Val, Mammon, and Alastor. I think it's important to note that, in their cases, the person they got to sign their contract could have been anyone. Husk and Angel could have been any sinners, Fizz could have been any imp. They aren't interested in them as people; they were only using them to gain more power for themselves. The only thing that matters to them is, "What can you do for me?" Angel and Fizz quite clearly become cogs in the machine of Val and Mammon's businesses, and Alastor only thinks of Husk as a tool to be leveraged in specific situations to further his own mysterious goals. Each of them has demonstrated to their subjugates that they own them, body and soul. They have signed legally and spiritually binding contracts that essentially surrender their autonomy to a more powerful demon.

Stolas and Blitz’s agreement is... not that. In the most literal sense, they don’t appear to have made any sort of binding deal. They just made a verbal agreement, which I sincerely doubt has anywhere near the force of a signed soul contract. Additionally, Stolas did not ask for and does not seem to want that sort of total control over Blitz. He very clearly does not view this as any sort of power exchange (which may actually be part of the issue, since it leaves him blind to Blitz’s discomfort with their class difference), he sees it as "favors for favors." While this agreement is inherently unbalanced due to Stolas's status, it's worth noting that they’re both putting something on the line here. The other three risk practically nothing (if the person bound to them fails they can always get a new one), but Stolas IS taking on a real risk by letting Blitz access the living world illegally using his book. Again, that doesn't make his actions right, and probably helped him to justify them, but it does set their relationship apart from the others.

In my opinion, some of Stolas's greatest flaws are his thoughtlessness and his ability to justify his own actions to himself. This manifests in the fact that he clearly doesn't see the ways in which their relationship is hurting Blitz. He convinced himself that this was just an equal exchange, and a continuation of the dynamic Blitz established in their first encounter as adults: "I fuck you, and you give me the book". As he becomes more aware of his feelings for Blitz, though (stay tuned for a deeper analysis of this progression later), he also begins to realize that Blitz isn't happy with this relationship. And this, as @masonshmason pointed out, is the central fact that separates Stolas and Blitz from the other relationships. Stolas did not realize- or chose to ignore- how he was hurting Blitz. Once he came to terms with it, though, he understood that he had to make things right. He specifically says this in "Just Look My Way"; "I will try to make amends/ For making you means to an end". None of the others could say this, because in their case, that was the POINT. Angel, Fizz, and Husk were ALWAYS a means to an end, intentionally trapped for that purpose.

We also need to talk about the CONTEXT of the scenes in which the chain imagery appears. For both Angel and Husk, the chain is at least semi-literal, a physical (and perhaps supernatural) manifestation of the way their souls are bound to an overlord. In "Two Minutes Notice," Fizz purposely CHOOSES to represent his relationship to Mammon as chains around his wrists. However, Blitz's scene is part of a drug trip after being forcibly dosed with hallucinogens. It does not exist in any literal sense, nor is it a representation of Blitz’s conscious, literal thoughts. What it DOES do is showcase Blitz’s deepest fears and his greatest flaws through symbolism and metaphor. Blitz is not literally afraid of being forced to wear a clown costume; he is afraid he'll never escape his past traumas or Fizz's shadow. THIS is the context in which Blitz sees himself being chained by Stolas: a bad trip all about his fear of intimacy and vulnerability.

Stolas appears in this trip as someone elevated high above him, something he's climbing towards, reaching for, even though it means being chained to him. It's directly preceded by his ex girlfriend and his former best friend berating him for how he pushes people away even though he hates being alone. Then Stolas directly asks him, "Are you afraid to love people, Blitzy?" Furthermore, the WAY in which he is framed is alluring, slightly hazy, golden and tempting. It couldn’t be further from the ugly, slime-covered past he's fleeing. It's a new start, a chance for something better that seems too good to be true. This trip is all about Blitz’s inability to be vulnerable with another person. The chain around his neck is a representation of the fact that, by getting closer to Stolas, he's giving Stolas the power to hurt him emotionally.

And man, there's a part of him that wants to give Stolas that power. At this critical moment, he's not baring his teeth in defiance or anger. He's blushing, just slightly, and he looks... nervous. Blitz's instinct, when things get too real, is to cut and run. Hurt them before they can hurt you. Abandon them before they have the chance to leave you. It’s how he tanked his relationship with Verosika. This is a manifestation of what might happen if he stays. This is the sort of trouble he can't fight his way out of.

This is the emotional climax of the scene. There are so many ways they could have gone with this if they wanted to represent Blitz being chained and trapped by his agreement with Stolas. If that was the fear--if that was the POINT--they could have had the chains wrap around him until he couldn't move, or glow white hot and burn into his skin, or a million other more direct metaphors. But the chains aren't the thing that hurts him. It's the feathers: the thing that's left behind after Stolas abandons him, sing-songing "you're going to die alone" right alongside two other people who he loved and who now want nothing to do with him.

Finally, let's look at Blitz’s reaction to this scene. It's a moment of revelation for him, in which he realizes he's pushing everyone away and starts to make an effort to change. It's why he's a bit more open with Moxxie in the next scene. The trip sequence ALSO inspires him to get closer to Stolas, indicating that the trip didn’t make him realize "I'm trapped and I need to get out of this" in the same way Fizz did. Rather, he realizes that he doesn't want Stolas to leave him like everyone else, and he wants to start feeling out what it would be like to deepen the connection between them. As I've mentioned in other posts, their kiss at the end of "truth seekers" represents a level of intimacy that we haven't seen before; it's teasing, affectionate, shows Blitz’s interest in making Stolas happy, and takes place in front of M&M, who have repeatedly teased him about their relationship before.

In summary, while the image of chains may have been invoked in all four of these relationships, they don’t necessarily mean the same thing across the board. Blitz and Stolas's relationship differs substantially from the others in its dynamic, and the context of their scene also sets it apart. It's important to look into the details and the nuance of their relationship to interpret what's going on under layers of trauma and unreliable narration.

#stolas #blitzø #stolitz #helluva boss #helluva boss spoilers #helluva boss meta #hazbin hotel

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cemeterything · 1 year

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is all true crime bad? genuine question. not referring to the very obvious disrespectful ones that are usually brought up when discussing the topic but rather documentaries and things of the sort. I feel like a lot of the documentaries around real crimes I watched bring up issues that aren't really talked about and a lot of the times are covered by institutions/media and also inform people on various things that they probably wouldn't have been aware otherwise so to me they can be very informational. there's also cases where victims of abduction for example have been recognised years later because of media like this which is objectively a good thing so I would like to know a little more about other negative impacts that might not be so obvious. if you have any source I can research on that's also great. sorry to bother!

i think that "true crime" in itself is a nuanced and varied topic and have no intention of tarring everyone who has an interest in it with the same brush, because there are definitely respectful ways of engaging with it that do their best to avoid and minimize harm. however i think that the popular culture depictions of true crime and capitalization on it as a form of entertainment tend to do more harm than good to both victims, who are frequently exploited for "content" and/or have their trauma dredged up for consumption, and consumers/producers, since a lot of mainstream true crime media reinforces harmful stereotypes, paranoia, surveillance tactics, and social divisions, and sensationalizes human cruelty and suffering. not to mention that this kind of approach to and fascination with horrific crimes and unusually cruel and violent criminals may encourage more people to inflict violence on others in order to gain notoriety and fame.

i don't think it's wrong to be interested in these things and to want to understand what makes people do horrific things to other people. one of my hyperfixations is the history of decapitation/capital punishment and its legacy, which is a topic that is fraught with issues surrounding the abuse of some of the most marginalized and vulnerable members of society. i myself am fascinated by it partly because of my own past experiences with abuse and marginalization. being interested in unpleasant things doesn't make you inherently a bad person, and thought crimes don't exist. however it's really important, especially when it comes to topics like this, to be self aware and critical of the information you're given, and to be careful not to be taken in by popular opinion and stereotypes without questioning them, or to get so immersed in your pursuit of knowledge and understanding that you lose your grip on reality and fall victim to misinformation and bias. believing too strongly in your personal ability to recognize and identify criminals and "criminal traits" and "solve" crimes, especially when the justice system is as flawed as it is, is more likely to lead to incorrect assumptions, the persecution of the marginalized and vulnerable, invasions of privacy and miscarriages of justice than it is to help.

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lasthaysileeshipper · 5 days

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advice for sejanus fans: don’t look at the comments of any video that talks about sejanus. some of the takes people have about him are so bizarre…

1) where in the world did people get the idea that sejanus WANTED his father to bail him out of trouble? he repeatedly says he wished his father wouldn’t throw money at all of his problems. he wasn’t reckless because he knew his father could bail him out, he was “reckless” because he was in extreme mental peril to the point of considering suicide.

2) it’s easy to say “oh he should’ve just played the long game and waited until he could use his father’s money for good” but

a) even if he had waited to inherit, his peers HATE his guts. who was going to listen to him? he’s district. to them, he’s inherently infieror. it’s easy for coriolanus to say what he says in the arena, because he has a name people recognize and respect. sejanus doesn’t.

b) in the time it would have taken for him to inherit his father’s business, so many more people would’ve died. maybe this is just me being autistic, but I can totally understand him being so desperate to fix everything wrong with the world right then and there and feeling so angry and devastated that he can’t. I, like sejanus, have a very strong sense of justice and am hyper-empathetic. I have spent so many nights wishing I could snap my fingers and fix everything that’s wrong with the world. sure, I can always donate money and volunteer, but regardless of what change I do make, innocent beings are still going to be hurt and/or die and there’s nothing I can to do stop that. it haunts me and I’m sure it haunts him, too.

3) he is young. he doesn’t know the full extent of how the world works. all he knows is that it’s bad and he would rather do something sooner rather than later, to save more people in the long run.

how people sympathize with coriolanus over sejanus is just absolutely mind-boggling to me. I think suzanne intended to portray him as a tragic character (considering his namesake) and that she accomplished that. sejanus is flawed, absolutely, but he has heart (arguably one too big for his body) and so much guilt stricken empathy with no way to properly process it.

every time I read comments on videos about him, I think to myself, did we read the same book? is there something I missed? or is this another haymitch situation, where interpretations of his character are inherently altered for the worst due to how he’s presented in the movie (still haven’t seen it in its entirety)?

#i’ve said this before but #even though the book doesn’t say he’s autistic like…#COME ON #lhs rants #lhs rambles #the hunger games #thg #tbosas #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #sejanus plinth #tbosas analysis #thg analysis

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absolutebl · 7 months

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Rules: List 10 of your comfort shows

tagged by @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle (thanks doll)

I rarely pass along tags but you should do this one and tag me if you do so I can see, comfort watches are my absolute FAVORITE.

This is a BL blog and I've watched most of them, so I will be picking BL. But I will only be picking BL I am rewatching for comfort right NOW.

Some of these may surprise. Ready?

My Top 10 Comfort BL's right NOW

1 kiss x kiss x kiss - perfect scandal (short)

My favorite of this series because it's basically office romance sexy bits we all wanted from Old Fashion Cupcake.

2 Jun & Jun

his show made up for in style what it lacked in substance. I like fluff. I loved this. I smile every moment I'm watching. This is very much MY style of BL.

3 Love is Science (BL cut)

Mark and Ouwen gotta be one of my all time favorite side dishes. LIS? is a noona romance with added mature side couple as well as these two, mostly interwoven. It’s a big buy in just for Mark & Ouwen but WORTH IT, and some kind soul uploaded a BL cut to YT. Everything is a touch quirky but the BL boys are beautiful, earnest, and high heat. It's one of Taiwan's favorite dynamics: the bisexual himbo meets the confident gay, but they are just LOVELY, plus tiny queer family at the end.

4 2 Moons 3

What can I say, it's utter trash but there is something about the main couple I love. A Thai pulp that felt like it came out 5 yrs ago with many of the flaws inherent to that time and studio system, including manufactured angst and convoluted plot, but an ultimately sweet main couple that (as a pairing) feels a bit more modern and is satisfying to watch. This will probably go down in history as one of the few BLs where I genuinely didn’t care about any of the side couples.

5 Love Class 2

But only "my couple." ( the mature student and the TA). I still hold that they probably should’ve had their own series.

6 Big Dragon

I didn't love this when it first aired but I am coming around to it more on the rewatch. (I may even up its score from 7 to 8 if the eventual movie sticks the landing). This is a pairing that proved itself to be a lot more sophisticated than I expected with nods at kink in a more respectful way than Mame could ever dream, plus excellent chemistry.

7 Why R U? Korea

The Korean remake of Why RU? is BOTH bizarro land, and EXACTLY what I expected. There is something comforting in watching the Cliff's notes version of a show I enjoyed before just in a different BL style. I don't know why I like this one so much, but I really do.

8 Takara & Amagi

I gnawed on my knuckles and squealed a lot with this show first time around. Now I still love it but I'm more calm. It is beyond charming: soft and gentle, packed with cuteness and high school angst, thirst, & yearning.

9 About Youth

A truly lovely little coming of age high school BL with a classic YA low drama but high angst and an earnest depth.

Clearly I'm having a bit of a high school phase because I've been thinking of doing this one next:

10 My School President

Yes, we’ve seen it all before, but I still ADORED this. And there is a lot to be said for the classics being re-executed perfectly. Who let my BL be this wholesome and funny?

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soracities · 1 year

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Hey! It has been on my mind lately and i just wanna ask..idk if it would make sense but i just noticed that nowadays ppl cant separate the authors and their books (ex. when author wrote a story about cheating and ppl starts bashing the author for romanticizing cheating and even to a point of cancelling the author for not setting a good/healthy example of a relationship) any thoughts about it?

I have many, many thoughts on this, so this may get a little unwieldy but I'll try to corall it together as best I can.

But honestly, I think sometimes being unable to separate the author from the work (which is interesting to me to see because some people are definitely not "separating" anything even though they think they are; they just erase the author entirely as an active agent, isolate the work, and call it "objectivity") has a lot to do with some people being unable to separate the things they read from themselves.

I'm absolutely not saying it's right, but it's an impulse I do understand. If you read a book and love it, if it transforms your life, or defines a particular period of your life, and then you find out that the author has said or done something awful--where does that leave you? Someone awful made something beautiful, something you loved: and now that this point of communion exists between you and someone whose views you'd never agree with, what does that mean for who you are? That this came from the mind of a person capable of something awful and spoke to your mind--does that mean you're like them? Could be like them?

Those are very uncomfortable questions and I think if you have a tendency to look at art or literature this way, you will inevitable fall into the mindset where only "Good" stories can be accepted because there's no distinction between where the story ends and you begin. As I said, I can see where it comes from but I also find it profoundly troubling because i think one of the worst things you can do to literature is approach it with the expectation of moral validation--this idea that everything you consume, everything you like and engage with is some fundamental insight into your very character as opposed to just a means of looking at or questioning something for its own sake is not just narrow-minded but dangerous.

Art isn't obliged to be anything--not moral, not even beautiful. And while I expend very little (and I mean very little) energy engaging with or even looking at internet / twitter discourse for obvious reasons, I do find it interesting that people (online anyway) will make the entire axis of their critique on something hinge on the fact that its bad representation or justifying / romanticizing something less than ideal, proceeding to treat art as some sort of conduit for moral guidance when it absolutely isn't. And they will also hold that this critique comes from a necessarily good and just place (positive representation, and I don't know, maybe in their minds it does) while at the same time setting themselves apart from radical conservatives who do the exact same thing, only they're doing it from the other side.

To make it abundantly clear, I'm absolutely not saying you should tolerate bigots decrying that books about the Holocaust, race, homophobia, or lgbt experiences should be banned--what I am saying, is that people who protest that a book like Maus or Persepolis is going to "corrupt children", and people who think a book exploring the emotional landscape of a deeply flawed character, who just happens to be from a traditionally marginalised group or is written by someone who is, is bad representation and therefore damaging to that community as a whole are arguments that stem from the exact same place: it's a fundamental inability, or outright refusal, to accept the interiority and alterity of other people, and the inherent validity of the experiences that follow. It's the same maniacal, consumptive, belief that there can be one view and one view only: the correct view, which is your view--your thoughts, your feelings.

There is also dangerous element of control in this. Someone with racist views does not want their child to hear anti-racist views because as far as they are concerned, this child is not a being with agency, but a direct extension of them and their legacy. That this child may disagree is a profound rupture and a threat to the cohesion of this person's entire worldview. Nothing exists in and of and for itself here: rather the multiplicity of the world and people's experiences within it are reduced to shadowy agents that are either for us or against us. It's not about protecting children's "innocence" ("think of the children", in these contexts, often just means "think of the status quo"), as much as it is about protecting yourself and the threat to your perceived place in the world.

And in all honestt I think the same holds true for the other side--if you cannot trust yourself to engage with works of art that come from a different standpoint to yours, or whose subject matter you dislike, without believing the mere fact of these works' existence will threaten something within you or society in general (which is hysterical because believe me, society is NOT that flimsy), then that is not an issue with the work itself--it's a personal issue and you need to ask yourself if it would actually be so unthinkable if your belief about something isn't as solid as you think it is, and, crucially, why you have such little faith in your own critical capacity that the only response these works ilicit from you is that no one should be able to engage with them. That's not awareness to me--it's veering very close to sticking your head in the sand, while insisting you actually aren't.

Arbitrarily adding a moral element to something that does not exist as an agent of moral rectitude but rather as an exploration of deeply human impulses, and doing so simply to justify your stance or your discomfort is not only a profoundly inadequate, but also a deeply insidious, way of papering over your insecurities and your own ignorance (i mean this in the literal sense of the word), of creating a false and dishonest certainty where certainty does not exist and then presenting this as a fact that cannot and should not be challenged and those who do are somehow perverse or should have their characters called into question for it. It's reductive and infantilising in so many ways and it also actively absolves you of any responsibility as a reader--it absolves you of taking responsibility for your own interpretation of the work in question, it absolves you of responsibility for your own feelings (and, potentially, your own biases or preconceptions), it absolves you of actual, proper, thought and engagement by laying the blame entirely on a rogue piece of literature (as if prose is something sentient) instead of acknowledging that any instance of reading is a two-way street: instead of asking why do I feel this way? what has this text rubbed up against? the assumption is that the book has imposed these feelings on you, rather than potentially illuminated what was already there.

Which brings me to something else which is that it is also, and I think this is equally dangerous, lending books and stories a mythical, almost supernatural, power that they absolutely do not have. Is story-telling one of the most human, most enduring, most important and life-altering traditions we have? Yes. But a story is also just a story. And to convince yourself that books have a dangerous transformative power above and beyond what they are actually capable of is, again, to completely erase people's agency as readers, writers' agency as writers and makers (the same as any other craft), and subsequently your own. And erasing agency is the very point of censors banning books en masse. It's not an act of stupidity or blind ignorance, but a conscious awareness of the fact that people will disagree with you, and for whatever reason you've decided that you are not going to let them.

Writers and poets are not separate entities to the rest of us: they aren't shamans or prophets, gifted and chosen beings who have some inner, profound, knowledge the rest of us aren't privy to (and should therefore know better or be better in some regard) because moral absolutism just does not exist. Every writer, no matter how affecting their work may be, is still Just Some Guy Who Made a Thing. Writing can be an incredibly intimate act, but it can also just be writing, in the same way that plumbing is plumbing and weeding is just weeding and not necessarily some transcendant cosmic endeavour in and of itself. Authors are no different, when you get down to it, from bakers or electricians; Nobel laureates are just as capable of coming out with distasteful comments about women as your annoying cousin is and the fact that they wrote a genre-defying work does not change that, or vice-versa. We imbue books with so much power and as conduits of the very best and most human traits we can imagine and hope for, but they aren't representations of the best of humanity--they're simply expressions of humanity, which includes the things we don't like.

There are some authors I love who have said and done things I completely disagree with or whose views I find abhorrent--but I'm not expecting that, just because they created something that changed my world, they are above and beyond the ordinarly, the petty, the spiteful, or cruel. That's not condoning what they have said and done in the least: but I trust myself to be able to read these works with awareness and attention, to pick out and examine and attempt to understand the things that I find questionable, to hold on to what has moved me, and to disregard what I just don't vibe with or disagree with. There are writers I've chosen not to engage with, for my own personal reasons: but I'm not going to enforce this onto someone else because I can see what others would love in them, even if what I love is not strong enough to make up for what I can't. Terrance Hayes put perfectly in my view, when he talks about this and being capable of "love without forgiveness". Writing is a profoundly human heritage and those who engage with it aren't separate from that heritage as human because they live in, and are made by, the exact same world as anyone else.

The measure of good writing for me has hardly anything to do with whatever "virtue" it's perceived to have and everything to do with sincerity. As far as I'm concerned, "positive representation" is not about 100% likeable characters who never do anything problematic or who are easily understood. Positive representation is about being afforded the full scope of human feelings, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and not having your humanity, your dignity, your right to exist in the world questioned because all of these can only be seen through the filter of race, or gender, religion, or ethicity and interpreted according to our (profoundly warped) perceptions of those categories and what they should or shouldn't represent. True recognition of someone's humanity does not lie in finding only what is held in common between you (and is therefore "acceptable", with whatever you put into that category), but in accepting everything that is radically different about them and not letting this colour the consideration you give.

Also, and it may sound harsh, but I think people forget that fictional characters are fictional. If I find a particularly fucked up relationship dynamic compelling (as I often do), or if I decide to write and explore that dynamic, that's not me saying two people who threaten to kill each other and constantly hurt each other is my ideal of romance and that this is exactly how I want to be treated: it's me trying to find out what is really happening below the surface when two people behave like this. It's me exploring something that would be traumatizing and deeply damaging in real life, in a safe and fictional setting so I can gain some kind of understanding about our darker and more destructive impulses without being literally destroyed by them, as would happen if all of this were real. But it isn't real. And this isn't a radical or complex thing to comprehend, but it becomes incomprehensible if your sole understanding of literature is that it exists to validate you or entertain you or cater to you, and if all of your interpretations of other people's intentions are laced with a persistent sense of bad faith. Just because you have not forged any identity outside of this fictional narrative doesn't mean it's the same for others.

Ursula K. le Guin made an extremely salient point about children and stories in that children know the stories you tell them--dragons, witches, ghouls, whatever--are not real, but they are true. And that sums it all up. There's a reason children learning to lie is an incredibly important developmental milestone, because it shows that they have achieved an incredibly complex, but vitally important, ability to hold two contradictory statements in their minds and still know which is true and which isn't. If you cannot delve into a work, on the terms it sets, as a fictional piece of literature, recognize its good points and note its bad points, assess what can have a real world impact or reflects a real world impact and what is just creative license, how do you possible expect to recognize when authority and propaganda lies to you? Because one thing propaganda has always utilised is a simplistic, black and white depiction of The Good (Us) and The Bad (Them). This moralistic stance regarding fiction does not make you more progressive or considerate; it simply makes it easier to manipulate your ideas and your feelings about those ideas because your assessments are entirely emotional and surface level and are fuelled by a refusal to engage with something beyond the knee-jerk reaction it causes you to have.

Books are profoundly, and I do mean profoundly, important to me-- and so much of who I am and the way I see things is probably down to the fact that stories have preoccupied me wherever I go. But I also don't see them as vital building blocks for some core facet or a pronouncement of Who I Am. They're not badges of honour or a cover letter I put out into the world for other people to judge and assess me by, and approve of me (and by extension, the things I say or feel). They're vehicles through which I explore and experience whatever it is that I'm most caught by: not a prophylactic, not a mode of virtue signalling, and certainly not a means of signalling a moral stance.

I think at the end of the day so much of this tendency to view books as an extension of yourself (and therefore of an author) is down to the whole notion of "art as a mirror", and I always come back to Fran Lebowitz saying that it "isn't a mirror, it's a door". And while I do think it's important to have that mirror (especially if you're part of a community that never sees itself represented, or represented poorly and offensively) I think some people have moved into the mindset of thinking that, in order for art to be good, it needs to be a mirror, it needs to cater to them and their experiences precisely--either that or that it can only exist as a mirror full stop, a reflection of and for the reader and the writer (which is just incredibly reductive and dismissive of both)--and if art can only exist as a mirror then anything negative that is reflected back at you must be a condemnation, not a call for exploration or an attempt at understanding.

As I said, a mirror is important but to insist on it above all else isn't always a positive thing: there are books I related to deeply because they allowed me to feel so seen (some by authors who looked nothing like me), but I have no interest in surrounding myself with those books all the time either--I know what goes on in my head which is precisely why I don't always want to live there. Being validated by a character who's "just like me" is amazing but I also want--I also need-- to know that lives and minds and events exist outside of the echo-chamber of my own mind. The mirror is comforting, yes, but if you spend too long with it, it also becomes isolating: you need doors because they lead you to ideas and views and characters you could never come up with on your own. A world made up of various Mes reflected back to me is not a world I want to be immersed in because it's a world with very little texture or discovery or room for growth and change. Your sense of self and your sense of other people cannot grow here; it just becomes mangled.

Art has always been about dialogue, always about a me and a you, a speaker and a listener, even when it is happening in the most internal of spaces: to insist that art only ever tells you what you want to hear, that it should only reflect what you know and accept is to undermine the very core of what it seeks to do in the first place, which is establish connection. Art is a lifeline, I'm not saying it isn't. But it's also not an instruction manual for how to behave in the world--it's an exploration of what being in the world looks like at all, and this is different for everyone. And you are treading into some very, very dangerous waters the moment you insist it must be otherwise.

Whatever it means to be in the world, it is anything but straightforward. In this world people cheat, people kill, they manipulate, they lie, they torture and steal--why? Sometimes we know why, but more often we don't--but we take all these questions and write (or read) our way through them hoping that, if we don't find an answer, we can at least find our way to a place where not knowing isn't as unbearable anymore (and sometimes it's not even about that; it's just about telling a story and wanting to make people laugh). It's an endless heritage of seeking with countless variations on the same statements which say over and over again I don't know what to make of this story, even as I tell it to you. So why am I telling it? Do I want to change it? Can I change it? Yes. No. Maybe. I have no certainty in any of this except that I can say it. All I can do is say it.

Writing, and art in general, are one of the very, very, few ways we can try and make sense of the apparently arbitrary chaos and absurdity of our lives--it's one of the only ways left to us by which we can impose some sense of structure or meaning, even if those things exists in the midst of forces that will constantly overwhelm those structures, and us. I write a poem to try and make sense of something (grief, love, a question about octopuses) or to just set down that I've experienced something (grief, love, an answer about octpuses). You write a poem to make sense of, resolve, register, or celebrate something else. They don't have to align. They don't have to agree. We don't even need to like each other much. But in both of these instances something is being said, some fragment of the world as its been perceived or experienced is being shared. They're separate truths that can exist at the same time. Acknowledging this is the only means we have of momentarily bridging the gaps that will always exist between ourselves and others, and it requires a profound amount of grace, consideration and forbearance. Otherwise, why are we bothering at all?

#this is so much longer than i intended but yeah. those are my very long 2 cents #tbh i also think social media makes it worse in a way especially bc “transparency” has become a form of public vetting which is insane to m #me* transparency and honesty are not the same thing ans its ludicrous that this is where we're at and while we all have to live with this #demand for transparency i do think it affects writers differently bc the whole art as mirror thing comes to the fore in this argument #why would you sit with your feelings about a book when its easier and more accessible for you to @ the authors twitter handle #but anyway #ask #anonymous #book talks

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funnier-as-a-system · 3 months

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Hiii. Not sure if this even counts as a question to be fair, nor is this a funny suggestion, but like.

For my final project in college I'm kind of making a game concept about plurality (as a system host myself) and uhm long story short I guess.

I made two characters-alters, one of which is female and the other is male, and the teacher who curates my project was like (super paraphrased) "I'm getting some romantic connotations here and I think we shouldn't show people that you can literally date yourself, cuz that seems super unhealthy" and he then backed down a bit and was like "well it's not really normal so maybe think about that some more".

And so like. The concept I'm making is based on the complicated relationship between me and my co-host. I am heavily basing the characters on me and that co-host, I am heavily using the issues we had in our relationship, to hopefully be able to show people who are new to plurality that you shouldn't treat your alters the way me and my co-host treated each other before, because THAT is what was unhealthy.

All of which is to say, right now I am married to that co-host and I'm very happy about that, but my teacher's words quite hurt me. Like I literally don't even understand what could be so unhealthy about in-system dating. How rare even is that? Is my perception of in-system dating just that skewed, since nearly all our alters are in a relationship with each other? Most importantly, am I faki-

(Also, by saying that, the teacher inadvertently recommended me to make it a gay ship. Lol? I wish I could make one of the characters an enby like me and avoid the issue entirely, but I can't) (My husband The Co-Host said that the teacher is just rude)

There's nothing inherently unhealthy about intrasystem dating. I've found most people who claim it's "unhealthy" actually mean "I find it weird and I can't distinguish between my personal discomfort and something that's actually bad." – a frustrating argument, but one we're familiar with, and one that should largely be ignored unless you're looking to engage in an educational discussion with someone who holds this view. Others claim it is unhealthy because it "encourages division/dissociation between headmates", but this is largely based on the idea that headmates having any sort of personal identity or self-identification gets in the way of achieving final fusion, which has its own flaws as an argument, including final fusion not being the goal or healthiest option for all systems, as well as ignoring that [harmful] dissociation may increase if a headmate does not have any sort of personal identity to distinguish themselves from the rest of their system with. In short, the arguments against intrasystem dating tend to boil down to "I think this is bad for you because it doesn't fit into what I think people should do", which only shows one's own close-mindedness.

Since plurality is an unfamiliar concept to most people, they don't have the experience necessary to distinguish between genuine red flags and something niche that just takes time to get used to the idea of. Intrasystem dating is niche, but it's no more inherently unhealthy than other kinds of niche dating, like t4t partnerships. The same argument has been used against polyamorous relationships for being similarly uncommon and going against what people expect of relationships (particularly romantic ones), but those are not inherently unhealthy either; it goes to show that people will reuse the same arguments against any kind of relationship they do not approve of, rather than taking a step back and considering for themselves if a particular relationship dynamic is inherently unhealthy. While intrasystem dating can be unhealthy, it is not inherently so just due to the relationship dynamic.

When backing down, your teacher said intrasystem dating is "not really normal", and that truly is the crux of this argument. People do not like that which does not fall neatly into their understandings of "normal", and think anything that isn't normal is automatically bad. This is untrue. I would say to hold strong to your original vision for your project, not just for yourself/ves, but because refusing to fall in line and pretend to be "normal" is how we achieve progress. Even if your teacher doesn't change his mind, your work may introduce the concept to someone else, making it less unfamiliar (more familiar) and more normal to them, leading to more people understanding and accepting not just systems in general, but intrasystem dating specifically.

Speaking of, to answer your question, while intrasystem dating is uncommon, I don't believe it's especially rare – I could name several of our headmates right now who are in a polyamorous partnership with each other, as well as a handful of other couples. We've known many other systems who have had some or all headmates dating each other. It's not the most common topic to talk about in the community, but it is certainly a topic frequent enough to be brought up from time to time.

Your teacher was rude and incorrect. I have sympathy for the hurt you feel because of his pluralphobic words, and I hope you're able to feel better about this incident soon. Remember, staying true to yourself will almost always feel better than hiding who you are for the comfort of others, so if you feel safe enough to go for it, push onward and continue your work with all its authenticity and intrasystem dating included. I wish you luck in your game development and your final project!

#thanks for the ask!#pluralphobia #intrasys sweethearts

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saintsenara · 3 months

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if you are still doing ship game, thoughts on jily?

thank you very much, anon - i am always taking questions both on romantic ships and on characters' platonic vibes, the more unhinged the better.

although jily can't really be described in those terms, not least because their narrative purpose in canon is to be little more than blank canvases onto which harry can project as he goes through his series-long character arc, shedding his initial hero worship of james when confronted with the reality of his father's behaviour in order of the phoenix and starting both to fully appreciate lily's centrality to the course his life is taking and to see his dad with nuance as a real and fully-rounded person, flaws and all.

this narrative role means that the glimpses we get of them in canon feel kind of superficial - their bantering during snape's worst memory is basically high-school-teen-movie level, the snapshots of their life under lockdown in deathly hallows lovely and bittersweet but also just colour to a storyline which is already all of those things.

and this is not to say that i find jily uninteresting as a ship - i completely reject the common anti-jily position that they didn't really like each other, that they had nothing in common, or that their backgrounds made them incompatible [i'll expand on this below, but while i do think that their respective blood statuses and the impact of these on their relationship are worth thinking about, i loathe fics which portray james as chafing against his marriage because, as a pureblood, he'd be more comfortable with someone 'of his own kind'. this is bullshit, and there's far, far too much of it in this fandom]. my views on one of james' most frequent non-lily partnerships are well known, and i share the outrage many jily fans have for the way lily in particular is treated in a subfandom increasingly dominated by rigid fanon which prioritises giving depth to male characters [even if those characters are, in essence, oc's] and slash relationships over exploring the canon female characters, partnered or not.

but i do also find that a lot of jily falls into the same trap as much of the hinny i dislike - that is, a tendency to present as a sunshine-and-roses fairytale a relationship which is much more interesting if the things which canon implies [and which can be reasonably inferred outside of canon scenes from a canon coherent engagement with the text] might have introduced an element of dysfunction into james and lily's partnership are taken into account.

the shadow of the war is obviously one of these things. what role lily actually plays in the resistance is something which preoccupies me [she is never mentioned in canon to have taken a combat role - and i find it considerably more plausible that any attempt voldemort made to recruit her was at snape's request and connected to her potions prowess] particularly because, as we see in the way her death is memorialised in deathly hallows, the series regards the defence of the integrity of the nuclear family as a key aim for the good guys. how does she interact with james and his wartime role when she's pregnant, nursing, or in hiding for the vast majority of her time in the order? how does she feel about her husband being a soldier if she's behind the scenes?

indeed, what role james [and sirius] plays in the order is also something i'm obsessed with thinking about - not least because so much of the inherent tragedy of the marauders' storyline is caused by the fact that james and sirius think they're fucking invincible and that their plans to keep the potters safe are foolproof. it's entirely reasonable to read james and sirius as being pretty gung-ho about being paramilitaries - and my headcanon is absolutely that more battled-hardened order members didn't like them very much [moody does not, after all, seem massively fond of sirius] - and lily seems affected by this too [she's not holding her wand either!], and what they thought they were doing as 1981 rolls around is compelling to me.

james and lily's divergent backgrounds is also something i'd like to see explored more in fandom - not, as i've said, in the dull 'james should have married a pureblood' way, but in a way which deals with the fact that their relationship follows wizarding norms. molly weasley can blame the war all she likes, but [although i doubt this was jkr's intention] the evidence of canon is that witches and wizards marry and have children extremely young as a social standard, that couples generally don't live together before marriage, that divorce doesn't seem to be common, and that married women tend not to work. lily - a mother at twenty and, therefore, presumably married at nineteen - is coming of age, then, in a magical world which thinks about gender very differently from the muggle world of the 1970s, and i think that tension is worth exploring.

[similarly, the way in which her marriage is self-protective - lily gains a pureblood name and the social cachet which comes with it at a time when she's in rising danger on account of her birth - is something i think it's worth looking at when considering the pairing.]

there are other flashes of dysfuntion which i adore thinking about in relation to jily - lily's relationship with the other marauders [you can pry the reading that sirius resents her for stealing the love of his life - and i certainly don't mean lupin - away from him from my cold, dead hands]; how much of his misbehaviour at school james conceals from her; the fact that lily becoming more overtly interested in james from her sixth year onward must have a little bit of attempting to make snape jealous mixed into it - and whenever i stumble upon them in fics i say oh ho like horace slughorn and kick my little feet in the air.

i care rather less about 'we're so hot and flawless and not doomed' as a trope.

but i do stan james for beefing with vernon dursley even though lily told him to behave. the man really is just that annoying.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #jily #james potter #lily evans #is this an 'i'm in danger' one?#only time will tell

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aro-comics · 2 years

Text

Growth (Part 1)

Growth, 1/3 – And … oh my gosh. I can’t believe it took THIS LONG to finish this comic ;A; I feel like I say this every time, but y’all – I STARTED PANELLING THIS ALMOST A WHOLE YEAR AGO. Really. It’s been sitting on my plate for too long, and I’m so glad I can finally share it!

Where do I even begin with my thoughts? For starters, I wanted to say the examples chosen in slide 8 are mainly from larger pieces of media, because they have greater influence on our *general social consciousness*. I don’t necessarily recommend or approve of the source material! I also have more thoughts on these characters, and about amatonormativity in relation to character growth in general, but for the sake of keeping this caption short(er) I will do so on my stories and pin them to my profile for future reference 😂

AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the sake of accessibility (and my own health) I will be making a transcript of the stories in its simplest form, posted here.

If you have any examples you can think of too, please let me know either in the comments or via DM 🐸🐸

I wish I was joking about the events which inspired this comic, but this LITERALLY happened to me, and this wasn’t the only time I experienced some form of amatonormativity or direct arophobia growing up. You may not think things like this are a problem, but this idea of romantic relationships as a crucial part of emotional growth has real world implications. Aros get told that their orientation IS the root of all their problems, or IS THE PROBLEM ITSELF, a lot. And not only is this wrong (and queerphobic), it also causes people to overlook the real issues that we may be struggling with. This can prevent us from getting help we NEED, not to mention the fact that orientation isn’t something that needs to be fixed.

In my personal experience … I don’t want to get into the specifics of the situation described here (Because it genuinely was one of the worst times of my life, and I don’t like thinking about it) – but basically, the help I needed was definitely NOT to get a romantic partner. A lot of my behaviours were very clearly ones that indicated I should have been hospitalized, or at least sent to a highly trained medical professional for intervention. But I never received any care, even though my parents were to some degree aware of what the issue was … and it somewhat appalls me that this family friend would take one look at me and somehow decide the issue was anything less than a serious, medical situation.

I want to emphasize I know none of them did it on purpose, and to be fair, it wasn’t entirely clear what the specific issue was (to the family friend at least). But it does hurt to have so clearly shown signs of crisis, to have done a near 180 in personality and behaviour, and to have it brushed off or implied that this is caused by something fundamental to your orientation. It makes me feel so inherently wrong, and if I’m going to be even more brutally honest I think the amatonormative way I was raised is a big part of the reason why I still struggle with my self esteem as an aro today. Even now, I still get told that maybe my remaining problems and personal struggles will go away if I was willing to give dating a try.

It just makes me so tired.

But, the more I reflect on my orientation and am able to connect with aros and the community as a whole, it has been helping. I don’t think it will go away any time soon, but at least when the feeling (that my orientation is something that’s fundamentally wrong with me) comes up I can tell myself that it just isn’t true. That I know that being aro isn’t a curse, isn’t a flaw, isn’t something that should haunt me for the rest of my life, that it’s something natural and beautiful and that I adore about my community. And I should extend that same care to myself, too. It has been getting easier.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic. Do you feel that others perception of your maturity and growth as a human being is influenced by amatonormativity?

Image Descriptions

Title Card: Cover Image. This Comic series is titled “Growth”. Celia, an east asian girl with wavy chin length hair, is illustrated wearing a cream crop top and yellow pants sitting amongst leaves and yellow flowers on a rocky surface. A watering can sits in the background.

Slide 1: Celia is seen standing from the side, with her arms crossed. She frowns. “When I was going through one of the worst times of my life, a family friend went out of his way to tell my parents that he noticed how unconfident I seemed.”

Slide 2: Scene turns to a memory, depicted as a sketch. The family friend is shown talking to Celia’s parents. “He told them not to worry though, because there was an easy solution. I just needed to find the right person, and start dating them.”

Slide 3: A speech bubble from the family friend illustrates this analogy. On the left is a flower pot with no plant, and a sad face above it. On the right is a blooming flower with hearts around it.

Celia’s note: I wish I was making this up. Blossom was LITERALLY the analogy used here

Slide 4: Back to Celia, who is speaking to the reader now: “It really, really hurt. I knew the reason why I wasn’t the best version of myself wasn’t because I hadn’t found love.”

Slide 5: She stares down at a yellow flower as she continues, “But unfortunately, I think thoughts, and unwarranted comments like these, stem from a deeper amatonormative view of the subject of growth”

Slide 6: “Countless stories which show the hero’s growth as pinned to their romantic arc.” Illustrated beneath is a stereotypical hero kneeling on the ground in front of his love interest. He holds a yellow flower as he says “I couldn’t have become the person I am today without you, your love showed me what’s worth trying for”.

Slide 7: “And on the more toxic side of things, those without romantic love or those who reject it end up as decrepit, cold, emotionally stunted, or sad.”

A few characters from popular, influential, or otherwise notable television shows are depicted here: Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations, Queen Chrysalis from My Little Pony (Generation 4), Dr. Berkowitz from One Day at a Time, Alan Harper from Two and a Half Men, and Rajesh Koothrappali from The Big Bang Theory. A note indicates to the reader to check the description.

As a disclaimer: The inclusion of these characters do not indicate the author’s recommendation or approval of the original source material – they are only meant to serve as examples of the point to be made.

Slide 8: Scene switches to Celia now watering a collection of ferns, mugworts, and other leafy plants in a greenhouse. She says “As an aro person, it’s tiring to hear the more toxic side of this narrative again and again. It feels like we’re being told we won’t grow, like others can.”

#regularcomic #GrowthComic

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fairuzfan · 5 months

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i’ve seen so many people simply claim that jewish palestinians point blank do not exist and it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of judaism/jewish history to claim they do… 🫥 deeply exhausting takes on this website

That's the thing is that it's just a blatant rewrite of history. And I'm not saying this to tokenize Jewish Palestinians or anything or make them a construct, it's just as someone who wonders at what point "Palestinian" ends and what point "Jewish" begins or vise versa. Like it's a question of identity. If I decide, myself, that I want to convert to judiasm... well right now, I can't as Palestinians aren't allowed to convert which is weird as hell, but if I could and wanted to — am I giving up a part of identity and switching it out for another one? Am I allowed to keep both identities together? If so, how do I fit into my community at large? What decides me, a 3rd generation refugee who has never been to Palestine, as "Palestinian" enough? Someone can deny my Palestinian heritage because there are arbitrary definitions being put in place without the consultation of all community members.

Like what's the point of this separation? I genuinely don't see a reason beyond segregation purposes. Some people say that it's to keep Jewish people safe (which I don't believe but to go along with this argument), But that safety relies on segregation and division of a society. Which obviously no real safety can occur, but also like you can't lie and say that it's something it's not. You can't say a society that makes distinctions based on identity legally is in any way democratic or just for all people for that matter. Because even if there are efforts to make people equal, when you have to say "Palestinians and Jews are equal..." Well you just straight up named the two groups you think have a difference between each other. That implicitly requires the reader to perceive a divide.

And you can argue, "let's just call everyone Israeli and make no distinctions between Palestinian and Jewish people," but Palestinians in Israel would never agree to that unilaterally, even if we are operating on a two state solution (which will never happen but for arguments sake). They'd rather not abandon their cultural identification. And even then, when the society is built of Jewish supremacy with the express purpose of erasing Palestinians codified in their founding documents, is that equality, knowing an indigenous population had to give up their identity to subscribe to perceived peace? Isn't that inherently violent and anti-equality?

Indiginiety, in Palestine, as i dont feel confident to speak on other peoples cultures and struggles, has to do with your relationship to colonialism as well as the land. For me, an indigenous person who has suffered the effects of displacement of colonialism and who regularly watches from afar as their land gets tormented, to hear that the only way I can go back to visit that land is to deny my centuries worth of ancestors buried on PALESTINIAN land, then I'd be incredibly heartbroken. This is even from my own perspective, which I consider the least important in my family line. My grandmother should be able to see her father's burial place without worrying about whether or not she's considered Palestinian or fully colonized as Israeli. My mother should be able to stroll the lands she's always heard stories about without worrying that the very essense of her personhood, the thing shes been denied her entire life having to grow up in refugee camp, as a palestinian is being denied in totality at the end of her struggle. People in refugee camps should be able to go back without worrying about where they fall in the world hierarchies of weirdly defined terms.

So like what's the real purpose with this distinction, exactly?? Any sort of society which operates on some basis of understanding that it is "for" a specific group of people and not anyone else is inherently flawed.

And like, again, Jewish Palestinians are a demographic that exist, I'm not saying this as a gotcha or construct, I am asking this for myself who has stakes in the matter of how this question is answered and dealt with in this larger framework. Would I stop being Palestinian if I decide one day to convert to judiasm? Am I "Palestinian enough" to receive the right of return based on the definitions of Palestinians you come up with in an Israeli society? If I'm excluded in any way, then yeah, I'm going to be angry about it. Most people would be. The issue is that I don't see a way to go about answering these questions without inevitably excluding someone or some group, if not in the definition, in the ways we form our communities after the fact.

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transmascpetewentz · 6 months

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A Short Guide To Writing Gay Trans Men

So a few disclaimers before I start:

I'm not going to talk about anything sex-related here because 1) people have made other guides and google is your friend & 2) I'm not very comfortable with it.

I am just one person, and due to the fact that I am white and thin and perisex, I will definitely have blind spots. If you want more information about intersections that don't apply to me, ask someone who it does apply to!

I did get lots of messages from trans guys giving me advice on this, but nonetheless I do not speak for absolutely everyone.

There will be very little info here on how to accurately write medical transitions because that's not something I've experienced. Google is your best friend on this one.

This is not a complete post. I will keep adding to it as time goes on. If you're seeing this post reblogged by someone else, click on the original to see if I've made any additions or corrections before you send me that anon hate and/or comment telling me to kill myself.

What Not To Do

When there is a trans male character written by a cis person, especially a cis man, there's a very solid chance that he is going to check off at least 9 of the following boxes:

Thin

White

Able-bodied

Neurotypical or LSN neurodivergent

Binary

No nuance given to his identity and expression

Sexuality not specified or elaborated on

A cis person's love interest

2 dimensional transmasc stereotype

Usually small and feminine, but not actually femme

Gay transmasc characters written by cis people are very difficult to find because cis authors will often not specify the sexuality of the trans man dating a cis man or elaborate on his connection to the MLM community. This is because many cis authors believe that writing a gay trans man is just writing a woman but switching one of the genders. This is, of course, not true, and there must be more care taken to provide nuance and create a more accurate (and non-dysphoria-inducing) representation.

Moving Past The White Twink Stereotype

This is one of the most basic bars to clear for a cis person writing a gay trans man, and yet so many continue to fail at this very simple task. Ask yourself: is your gay transmasc character a white, hairless, thin person? If the answer is yes, that's not inherently a bad thing, though it may be good to reflect on why you want to create a character like this if this is the only type of transmasc representation you write.

The biggest thing you need to do here is to give him a set of defining traits. Not physical traits, not even gender expression traits. Just personality. What kind of person is he? How does he cope with the transphobia in this world (unless you're writing a fantasy universe without transphobia)? How does he act towards strangers? How does he approach people of different genders? What is his outlook on cis people? Once you have the basics, it's time to think about his physical appearance & expression and how that has impacted his life and his personality.

You also want to avoid the trope where a gay trans man's personality is undeveloped and he is treated as an object for cis men to help them advance their character arcs. It's fine for trans men to serve a purpose like that in the story, but they need to be their own individual humans.

Writing Sexuality

If your trans male characters date men, and I cannot reiterate this enough, make them be open about their homosexuality or bisexuality. Give them a sexual orientation and make them be proud of it. Of course, not every gay trans man is going to identify heavily with a masc/fem role in gay male relationships, but you should seriously consider whether or not your character would.

Additionally, don't follow the flawed line of logic of "trans man -> vagina -> bottom -> fem/femme." It's fine to make your gay trans male characters fem but please, I swear to god please give them a good reason for being so. If you do make your character femme, be very cautious to use language that doesn't trigger actual trans men's dysphoria. Don't constantly point out the character's physical features that may be associated with femininity unless you're making a point either about his dysphoria or about how society treats him or maybe about how he comes to accept his body. However, please be extremely careful with the last one as this trope has been used in so many transphobic portrayals.

Have your gay trans male character exist in gay spaces with other gay men (both cis and trans). Have him be open about being a gay man specifically. Give him cis gay male friends. Give him trans gay male friends. Don't allow your reader to ignore the fact that he is very much a gay man.

Dysphoria

For the love of all things good, please do not write your gay trans male character's dysphoria as "from the day I was born, I knew I was born in the wrong body. I have had no internalized shame or guilting into making me doubt my transness, and it was obvious that I was not a woman." That's not how anyone's dysphoria works, even if they did know from a young age that they were born in the wrong body.

For gay trans men specifically, most of us end up realizing we're trans around either age 12 or age 20. This doesn't mean he has to be exactly that age, but that's generally the safest age to have your character's egg crack. Of course, you can sprinkle in signs that he's trans since he was a young child, but I know a lot of gay trans men and I have yet to meet one who has known since birth and has had no doubt in his mind about it. However you can and should write older gay trans men, even some who find out they're trans in their 40s or older. Representation of older trans people is seriously lacking compared to how many there are.

Don't make your character the stereotype of a straight trans man who doesn't face the specific intersection of being trans and gay. Facing this intersection does affect something even as personal as dysphoria. Many of us will have self-doubt, believe that we're disgusting fetishists of gay men, or simply exist as women in gay spaces for a time. You also have to take into account gay beauty standards & your character's upbringing to figure out what they're likely to be most dysphoric about.

hi :3

That's it for now. I'll keep adding to this post as I get feedback and suggestions. If you want more advice, feel free to send me an ask. When I get enough asks about things, I'll make an FAQ post answering some of them.

#wentz.txt #transmasc #writeblr #long post #extremely long post

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apinkheartinmiddle-earth · 1 year

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I was watching The Two Towers again recently and I realized something about Eowyn. Many paint her as this strong badass woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone, which is still true in a sense. However, people tend to forget that she is still a flawed character and has a long way to go in the story so far.

This was probably the intention of the scene, but when she was complaining about having to be with the women in the caves, it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. The women of Rohan tending to the children and finding food is still an important task, after all. Eowyn was practically looking down on them because they weren’t doing the badass stuff assigned to the men. More so because she couldn’t be able to join the men in battle. She fails to see that someone needs hold the fort so that the warriors have a home to come back to. Without those staying at home, Rohan would fall apart.

It was good on Aragorn for calling the women’s duties an honorable charge because he knows damn well that their role is just as important as those in battle. I love how he holds them in highest respect for it and calls out Eowyn for how she talks down on them. Aragorn is calling out Eowyn for her internalized misogyny, basically.

Now, I am not going to drag Eowyn and call her awful (why the fuck would I, I literally love her). I’m trying to look at this from a place of understanding at how she could have possibly got this mindset in the first place. It just suddenly struck me that one of the reasons she probably thinks this way is because she didn’t really grow up with a significant mother or female figure in her life whose duties involved the home. She was raised by a man whose job was to command armies. Therefore, she has never truly understood why these women chose to hold the fort instead of going out into the trenches. Tending to the house and taking care of the children is an inherently thankless job but a very important one nonetheless.

Eowyn putting down these women and their duties was perhaps because of her lack of understanding, not because she held any resentment towards them. In fact, she probably wanted them to fight alongside the men like what she desired for herself. But it bears repeating that what she fails to see is that someone has to take care of matters at home. It would be amazing if the women of Rohan had the opportunity to go into battle, but alas, they have to stay there since they have little say in doing so. Sexist? Quite. But the women are still doing their job at home the best they can.

Weirdly enough, that scene of Eowyn complaining to Aragorn actually made her character development all the more meaningful to me. Remember by the end when she decided to become a healer and love all things that grow? Yeah, some people didn’t fuck with it because they thought Eowyn was going to become dainty and submissive. However, I rocked with Eowyn making that decision.

This was the turning point in Eowyn’s story when she realized that war fucking sucks and that her worth shouldn’t come from how many enemies she can slay or how traumatized she can get from the horrors of war. She finally chose to prioritize love, kindness, gentleness, growth, and happiness. That’s about the most badass thing someone can do, to be completely honest. As a result, Eowyn has surely grown from looking down on the mothers and other carers in Rohan.

This is in no way trying diminish her typical badass heroine characteristics, but to show people that she still really had a long way to go in spite of her obvious strengths. It’s just that her battling capabilities and desire to fight with the armies don’t necessarily make her better than those who are just trying to keep their families safe and fed at home. I love how she grew from this mindset and chose instead to be empowering in her own way without the need to put down other women who obviously had important jobs to do.

#lord of the rings #lotr #tolkien #eowyn #aragorn #middle-earth #feminism #eowyn of rohan #lotr meta #lotr eowyn #text #the lord of the rings #the two towers #miranda otto #jrr tolkien #rohan #lord of the rings headcanons #lotr headcanon #lotr headcanons

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wingedcat13 · 2 years

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Synovus: Villains Never Retire (4)

[And the end of Villains Never Retire - this one took much longer to finish, and it's a bit longer than the other segments at 11,334 words. Warnings for death, and rather more descriptions of violence than have thus far been typical. As always, catch up on what's come before from my pincushion post, and find this chapter on Ao3 here!]

How do you keep a clairvoyant from knowing that you are coming for them?

The short answer: you don’t.

The long answer is that it is, technically, possible. However, masking your movements from a clairvoyant is dependent on what type of clairvoyant they are.

Do they read actions, or intentions? If actions, work through someone else or manipulate the environment. Do not decide on a course of action until one conveniently presents itself. A spur of the moment blitz. If intentions, hire multiple actors. One of them will slip through the myriad warnings eventually. (Personally you think this method is a waste of assassins)

Do they only read the short term, or can they predict further into the future as well? If the short term only, poisons over time work best. If long term, be sure to act both kind and hostile in equal measure, until the method of their death is confused.

Is their ability only clairvoyance of the future, or can they read the past as well? If they can, you can never speak of your intentions aloud. Hide your correspondence in code, and send an assassin.

Of course, this all assumes you have time and assassins. You, personally, have neither.

But you do have something else: connections.

—-

When you recognize Athena and Menace in the broadcast, you want nothing more than to tear out of your lair and into the night like the wrath of hell let loose.

But there are several flaws in that plan, including that it is currently daylight, and that doing so would certainly get more people killed than you intend. Specifically people you care about, so that’s out.

Instead, you make a few phone calls.

“Optix.” You were still staring at your phone as the broadcast continued, promising an hour of execution. “Are you the reason I’m seeing this?”

You still weren’t sure what, exactly, Optix was - but it went by ‘it’ and had given its name, and was inherently jacked into any electronic cloud you had ever encountered. You didn’t know if it was a person, a program, or a genuine Artificial Intelligence, but you did know it could be helpful when it chose to be.

A thumbs-up emoji appeared in your messages.

“I owe you.”

A ‘no’ emoji, the red circle with its diagonal line.

“Do you have a location?”

Another ‘no’ emoji.

“Noted.”

The broadcast ended, you swept your phone back into your pocket.

“Boss,” that was Doll, looking very pale. “This is-“

“A trap? A problem? A truly blindingly idiotic move by a pack of misguided muppets I’m about to return to the scrap pile? Yes. Yes it is.”

The shadows are still writing around you, but they are drawing closer to your skin. You managed not to vaporize anything this time.

“Your eyes are glowing.” Doll notes uncertainly.

Glowing? Hm. That’s a bad sign. Normally it’s the shadows that appear there first.

Of course, the shadows come to hand when you are furious, when the anger is hot and choking. They rise when you are defensive, murky and obscuring. But this emotion - you are not certain you can call it anger, anymore, that somehow feels too weak - is cold at its core. Not the freezing, biting cold of fear, but the frost wind that steals warmth and cuts like knives.

And that emotion, whatever it is, is what calls the light.

“I am in control.” You inform Doll flatly. “Gather the others, make travel preparations. I have calls to make.”

Doll nods, bolting out of the room. You know it isn’t to get away from you so much as it is to get to work doing something, to feel as though he can help.

You replay the broadcast, short as it is.

By the time you’ve finished watching it a second time, you have a plethora of messages - other villains, sending you the clip. You don’t bother responding.

Instead, you flip to the number pad. Four digits into the number you intend to dial, it rings, from the same source.

You answer. A frustrated voice spits out a coordinate string and disconnects.

How do you keep a clairvoyant from knowing how you are going to kill them?

You use another clairvoyant, of course.

—-

When you drop from the underbelly of your plane, you do so alone.

Your minions are there, of course - Heather's piloting, with the rest on support positions or with other tasks when they actually land. But you will not take them with you into a brawl when you can help it.

You cannot fly, but you can use a different trick you learned through some very difficult trial and error - summoning sections of shadow and solidifying them, to 'run' across the sky. It's a peculiar feeling that combines vertigo with certain mental acrobatics to circumvent the laws of physics. If you fuck up, you'll fall.

So you don't fuck up.

You also don't try and stay airborne long. Instead, you let yourself drop in increments, cushioned by your shadows, until you reach the scrubland below.

You are, perhaps, a mile out from the outskirts of the town that you've been given the coordinates of. There's no question of whether it's the right one - there's a giant, gleaming metal spire in its center that doesn't belong amidst the southwestern architecture.

(The question of who endorsed these idiots is a problem you will handle later.)

There is no sign of movement in the town itself. The residents are either already casualties, imprisoned, or fled. You don't actually care which, you just want to know if you'll be stepping over more corpses than the ones you make.

There's only one way to find out - so you start walking.

---

Earlier, when you were first starting to train Alexandria, she had asked you why you never carried weapons.

"I don't really need them." You'd answered, even as you went through a practice pattern with a padded staff. "My shadows are amorphous, I can craft them however I need to. Harder mentally than fixing them into shape, but more difficult to physically counter."

Alexandria had been taking a break, perched on top of the giant tire you'd been having her lift. "You sure it's not just an image thing?" She'd asked skeptically.

You'd grinned, "Oh, it definitely adds to the image. I am unarmed, because I am always armed."

"Mom says you should do the opposite." She'd remarked. "Carry a weapon so that people think you're reliant on it, and then when they disarm you, they're surprised."

"That trick only works on someone once - though your mother does put it to good use. Also, her abilities are a little easier to disarm than mine. Shadows are everywhere - water? Not quite so easy to come by in certain circles. And the spear adds to her reach for better maneuverability. Your father too, I suppose, though he's more likely to bash someone with that shield."

Alexandria had studied you. "You really know a lot about how they fight."

In answer, you'd twirled the staff in your hands, and mimicked some of the spear patterns you'd seen both Athena and Legionnaire use.

"'Therefore I say: 'Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.'" You quote.

"Sun Tzu?" Alexandria sighs, "Please don't make me memorize the Art of War. I've already got paragraphs of the Iliad I'll never be able to get rid of."

"Memorization's pretty useless." You toss the staff instead, spinning it for fun instead of a combat pattern. "I just want you to understand what it means, not how much gold you need to allocate per li traveled."

Alexandria had eyed you suspiciously, "How many times have you read the Art of War?"

"No more questions." You'd declared. "How's the flight coming?"

---

Thunder booms by the time you've made it to the spire itself.

The sky has been steadily darkening, as you've picked your way through the empty streets. There are pock marks in the asphalt, holes in the buildings. Some of them are burned to the ground or melted - Cobalt's work, most likely.

You briefly wonder if they have a recovery factor, if you'll have to put them down again today. It doesn't change much, either way.

No bodies. Bloodstains, crumpled cars. Someone's had the wherewithal to clean, at least. Or someone who could raise the dead showed up already - hard to tell from context clues.

If you weren't wearing your helmet, you could've taken a deep breath and smelled only the heat, melting into the softer gentleness of rain. You could've felt the wind on your face, in a steady breeze.

But you were wearing your helmet, so you only noted those things distantly, and that made it all the more contrasting when you stepped into the trap that had been laid for you.

---

There are sirens wailing, somewhere. The few who have not been cut off already, cut silent as the screams of the living have been, one by one and in waves. The hush that should follow is denied by the high pitched whining of machinery and the sound of burning things. There are sparks, and pops. Something like words worn smooth in the background, run over so many times that they're part of these floorboards that are now cracking and failing, released again at the moment of unmaking.

You focus on the sounds, because you cannot see the devastation. You focus on the sounds, because you cannot smell the burning. You focus on the sounds, because if something does not force you to confront it, you do not know how fast or far away you would be running.

You shut your eyes and fight for air. Your hands close into fists, and you feel the world roll around you. An earthquake? You should be running -

Breathe. Weigh the situation, then move.

The sirens are too loud. The flames - you would've noticed them earlier, seen the smoke. The pieces of this scenario do not match.

You flip the settings on your helmet. The sounds do not change.

A mental effect, then. An illusion?

On a hunch, you blanket the area around you in shadow. From a building to your left, you hear a squeak of terror.

Slowly, not trusting your sense of direction, you turn towards it and take a single step.

"I know that you are there." You say calmly. "Your illusions are good, but they are not perfect. Come out, or my shadows will drag you out."

There's a pause, and the illusions intensify - you can feel the heat of fire on one side of your body, smell harshly chemical smoke - then the thunder cracks again, and you are abruptly returned to the near silence of reality.

A shuffling of footsteps. Then a small head pokes around a doorframe.

You run your shadows over them anyway, to make sure this is not an adult pretending to be a child. If they are, they're either much better at illusions than they're letting on, or they can also shapeshift.

You'd say the figure that steps into view is no more than eight years old.

"What is your name?" You ask, still calm, still gentle.

"Ciaran." The answer is in a near whisper.

"They did not give you a code-name?"

The child pales. "Ch-Cheshire. Like the cat."

You nod. "Very well, Cheshire. I am Synovus."

You look up and down the street, and compare the feelings of your vision to the area that surrounds you now. A few things make sense.

"I know." The child says, swallowing. "Please don't kill me."

"I will only kill you if you try to kill me." You answer, matter-of-fact. It's no use protesting that you don't kill children, no one ever believes you. "Your abilities - that wasn't an illusion, was it? It was a memory. A memory you pushed into my mind."

Cheshire nods, hesitant. "Ez - Jester said I should make you scared."

"And so you chose something that had scared you." You complete, "I felt your fear. And why did Jester want me scared?"

"I'm not supposed to answer any questions."

"You already have."

"You're going to hurt me. Hurt them."

You fold your arms. Why do you keep winding up in moral arguments with children?

"That will not change based on what you tell me, little one."

"I wasn't supposed to be here." Cheshire blurts. "I was supposed to wait - to wait until you came inside, and then -"

They fall silent, and you nod. "And then Jester would teleport behind me, hm? And why are you out here then, alone?"

"Because I don't want you to hurt them. I thought I could make you run away before you fought."

"Others have come here before me. Have you scared them away too?"

The child scuffs a foot. "Some of them. No one's ever found me though."

You crouch. "You've done a very stupid thing, coming out here to face me. But I am not here for you, and I am in a hurry. Hide, and I will not hurt you."

Cheshire steps back, but hesitates. "And Jester?"

You sigh. "They must face the consequences of their actions."

Cheshire's bottom lip wobbles. "Don't kill him! He's - he's my brother, I don't - promise you won't kill him!"

Sometimes, you really do hate yourself. Past, present, and future.

"I promise." You grit out, "That I will not kill your brother, Jester, on the condition that you hide, and not use your powers again, until a woman named Rosie comes to get you. Do we have an agreement?"

A stubbornness enters Cheshire's expression. "Pinky promise."

Again, you feel like this is a trap. Also, you're mildly offended that you would need to make a further oath than the one you've already made, but this is a child. So you hold out one hand, as far as you can, and Cheshire does the same.

When Cheshire nods solemnly, you straighten, and turn back towards the spire. The sound of scuffling marks the child's scramble through the rubble, and you hope you haven't made a terrible mistake in letting them get away.

You allow yourself another heavy sigh, and call Rosie to tell her what to expect.

---

You don't actually know for sure whether or not you have siblings. But wanting to sacrifice yourself to save a family member? You can remember feeling that way.

You know who your parents are (sometimes you wish you didn't) and you're reasonably sure your mother didn't have another child after you. Your father could have a whole bevvy of children, a miniature army, and you would never have known. An elder full-blooded sibling could've been taken away prior to your conscious memory.

Your father was known as Sunhallow. He who is Hallowed by the Sun. A god-made-flesh, who seemed to bleed gold and healed in the sun, and could incinerate enemies in beams of light.

Your mother was simply your mother to you, and if she ever did anything with her minor telekinetic gifts beyond keep up with you, you never heard about it.

When you were young, an enemy came calling. Several, perhaps. You were packed from your private tutoring into a safe room, and you did not come out for several days. It was you, your tutor, and a few others, who you knew would die to protect you on pain of a worse death at Sunhallow's hands.

When you finally came out again, you were brought to see him. He told you that your mother had had to go away, but if you worked hard enough, you could be allowed to go see her again. When you would not be a burden to her work.

Desperate to please, you had thrown yourself into your education and training. Combat, economics, athletics. Trying to find a way to call the sun the way Sunhallow could, in vain.

Several months in, your shadows had finally manifested for the first time. You'd been delighted to show him, begged to be allowed to speak to your mother - a letter, a phone call.

Sunhallow had refused.

After that day, he called you his moon-child. You became his shadow, never speaking, never moving unless called upon to do so. Your training, somehow, increased.

And when you had done that for a month, you were brought into a room where a caped hero had been restrained on a table. You knew their name from the list you were to memorize, and their strengths and weaknesses accordingly. Their name was Willowsteel.

Sunhallow put a dagger in your hands, and pointed at Willowsteel.

"There is the man who took your mother." He told you, "Go and get her back."

You had torn into them as though somewhere inside them was a key, and you could use it to open a door, and on the other side would be your mother, happy to see you after so long apart. But there was no key: only blood, and eventually that ran out too.

When you were done, Sunhallow had led you to another room, and showed you your mother's corpse.

---

The rain began to fall just as you stepped over the threshold of the spire.

It caused an interesting audio phenomenon on the inside, as it rang off the metal in a discordant harmony with the hum of the air conditioning. Thunder rumbled again.

There was no one in the entry hall that you could see. Only an empty room, wide and spacious, with a large grand staircase leading up. It feels more like a warehouse than a lair.

“Optix.” You whisper inside your helmet. “Does this place have an intercom?”

A two note trill that you take as a yes.

“Would you be so kind as to patch me into it, for a moment?”

Another two note trill, then the sound that usually heralds you should leave a message in a voicemail.

“Perhaps I was not clear enough, the last time we spoke.” You drawl, and in your voice is cold fury and disdain. There are sounds of startled movement from the stairs. “Allow me to clarify.”

Metal really is a horrible building material - the boots of anyone who is coming ring with such finality as they run to meet their deaths. A line of those you take for goons, pale-faced and unsteady and armed with automatic weaponry you know is stolen.

Your voice doesn’t waver, doesn’t change. Each word is delivered with gravitas and perfect diction. “Thou hast fucked around.”

You take several steps forwards into the room, your cape billowing behind you. The empty black blank of your helmet offers no reprieve or indication of humanity - only their own reflections.

“Thou shalt find out.”

Thunder shakes the sky - and the goons open fire.

—-

How do you keep a shadowmancer from killing you?

Well, that depends on how you define a shadow.

Must it be pure, pitch darkness? In that case, arrange for sufficient lighting, and they will be powerless.

Must it be a living thing’s shadow? Lure them into a trap, provide sufficient lighting, no living shadow to work from.

But can it be a half-shadow? If so, sufficient lighting becomes a problem. One need only cup their hand to create a negative space within the light, and draw a shadow from there. A bundle of a cape edge. The hollow of one boot.

And speaking of hollows - if a shadow is simply where the light isn’t, what, then, of a body’s hollows? The spaces in the mouth, the lungs, the small pockets inside various cavities. The slim space between brain and skull. Are those shadows?

Because if they are, a shadowmancer does not need external shadows to kill you.

And how do you keep a shadowmancer like that from coming to kill you?

Short answer: you don’t.

—-

You don't bother to count your kills. The ticker on that particular statistic is long broken, and you will not linger here. You grant them the mercy you have to give, and make things quick.

It takes you less than thirty seconds to go from staring down a wall of automatic rifle barrels to stepping over corpses, and up the stairs.

About halfway up the first level, the air shifts.

You pause, and when no immediate strike is forthcoming, you turn. "You do not have so many opportunities available to you that you can afford to waste an opening like that." You chide.

Jester is flushed, their breathing heavy. They stand where you were seconds earlier, and stare at the room, and then up at you.

"What did you do to Dymania?" They ask, and you see the edge of desperation in their eyes.

You decide that this is a lesson that can only be truly taught once. "A better question." You say thoughtfully, "Would be what I did to Ciaran."

At the mention of their brother's name, you watch Jester's face go through a variety of emotional contortions. You wouldn't bother to name all of the shades, but 'terror' features predominantly among them.

To Jester's credit, they learn quickly. The next time they teleport, there is no more pretense of talking.

---

In the rooms above you, you cannot see it for yourself, but you will learn later that Dymania is paralyzed. They lie on the floor, in the room crafted for them to get the most from their gifts. Overloaded with a thousand potential futures, each only a maddeningly small difference from the next, they occasionally shout or spasm.

In the room above them, Minerva has finally found an opening. She is trailing more goons, there is a bullet in her shoulder, and her leg is still not completely healed, but she manages to reach the rainwater, and that is all that she needs.

On the same level, down the hall, Alexandria is no longer held in check by her mother's captivity. They far underestimated her strength, and she has broken the bonds on herself and several others. When someone tries to enter the room, she takes the door off of its hinges and literally sweeps a path clear for the other hostages to flee.

Outside, Rosie is sitting on a chunk of concrete rubble, talking to a little boy who has no idea there are four others hidden in the area around him, ready to strike anyone else who approaches.

And a single figure hurtles through the sky, with no way to know that he is already too late.

---

You probably could've ended the fight with Jester much sooner, but... okay, so you were maybe having some fun with it.

Not because he was so clearly distressed, mind, just because how often did you really get to brawl with someone? No super strength, no weapons, no summoned spouts of fire, just a good old fashioned punch-out.

Yeah, sure, the kid teleported, but that just made it more interesting to fight him.

(You weren't sure what would happen if he solidified in a space he happened to share with, say, your arm, and you were disinclined to find out, so you had to lead your movements just enough and - well, it was harder than it sounded.)

And yes, you are furious still, but that fury was largely alleviated by doing something, and with the pieces you have set into motion, you will have to trust in the others in the building to play their parts. Also, you did promise not to kill this one, specifically.

So when he tries to gain enough momentum to blindside you by teleporting up and coming down, and you sidestep on the blood-slicked staircase, there is not a spike of shadow waiting to impale him if he does not teleport again quickly enough. When you see an opportunity to force him to carry through a motion and crack his skull into the railing, you stay your hand.

Mostly, though, you move in circles that broaden to leaps of your own, until Jester decides to try and pick up one of the guns of the dead goons.

You fold your arms as he aims at you. "Nice try."

Jester furrows his brow, the mask contorting to match. He glances at the barrel, does a doubletake, and swears. Frantic scurrying only turns up more of the same.

"I don't - what - how?" He cries, jumping from body to body for a gun that works.

"Solidified the shadows in the barrels." You lean against the railing and cross one leg over the other. You're only mildly winded.

“You can do that?” Jester cries in horror.

You hum. You aren’t entirely unsympathetic. “I can do many things.”

Jester looks up at you, something like determination in his eyes - and disappears.

When he does not reappear, trying to punch you again, you sigh. “Damn it.”

You click your way through to Rosie again. “Yeah, I overdid it. No, I’m fine. I am not that old. The roof? Fine. There better be an elevator.”

Grumbling, you find the elevator at the heart of the spire. They haven’t locked it yet - so you’ll take however many floors you can get out of it before they do.

—-

When you were younger, your mother told you about the things that made someone Great.

You can’t quite say they were stories, because they were more like… half-anecdotes, strung together on a line. But they were always meant to entertain and teach, and you could listen while you did other things.

For a long time, you thought they were all about your mother and father. She was every brave woman who thought to heal instead of breaking, every woman who drove a weapon’s blade through solid stone, every woman who adventured and every woman who stayed home.

Your father was every man who proved the truer than his enemies, who rallied others to his cause, who truly believed and in that faith called others to follow. Inspired them, rather than commanded.

And you? You were both of them. You had your mother’s adventuring and wisdom, your father’s effortless grace and pure heart. You did not need your own stories, when you could frolic in the mix of theirs, leaping from one tale to the next, an ephemeral sidekick.

Your mother never corrected you. But you learned, eventually.

Your father was never the protagonist in those stories at all.

And where did that leave you?

—-

The elevator stops about two stories up, by your reckoning, and had you been standing by the door like a dunce, you would've been pummeled by a torrent of water.

And had there not been mirrors at the back of the elevator, you might've pummeled Minerva with a torrent of shadow.

But there were, so you could see it was her from your vantage of tucked-into-the-corner, and she could see it was you as the center mirror cracked and shattered.

(You weren't sure if you should commend these young idiots for thinking of the corner tricks, or condemn them for putting in wall to floor mirrors. Really, those things shatter no matter what kind of treatment you give them.)

"Synov-" Her incredulity is cut off, as you sweep around the corner - and sweep her into a hug.

She must be exhausted, because you get away with it. She stands rigid for a moment, bracing, likely thinking you're tackling her or some other nonsense. Once it becomes clear - oh, a second or two later - that you're only wrapping your arms around her in reassurance that she's alive, some self-preservation instinct drops.

For a moment, she rests her head on your shoulder, and gently presses one arm against your back.

When she pulls away, you do too.

"I should've known you'd come for Al- Menace." She says, and her throat is raw. Smoke? Screaming? (You're going to burn this town a second time) "Had to show me up one more time."

"One day, Minerva." You say quietly, "I'm going to prove to you that my affection for you is not a trap, or some kind of proxy for your child. But for now -"

You spread your hands, summoning shadows between them. You spin them like thread, that thickens to wire, that thickens to cord, pulled taut and bulging on one end. That end clarifies - sharp edges, a wide base that narrows to a point. A replica of Athena's spear.

Minerva - Athena? - takes it, weighing its balance. She opens her mouth to say something, but you are already holding out a disc in the shape of her shield.

"The weight's wrong." She says, taking the shield.

"Shadows." You say apologetically. "Not the heaviest things. Shall we?"

Minerva clears her throat, "Menace is searching for more cells. They had a lot of people here."

You nod, and follow when she walks away. "Anyone other than Jester and Dymania I should worry about?"

Athena adjusts her shield. "Not while I'm around."

---

When you were Sunhallow's shadow, he called you 'Eclipse.'

You were not his enforcer - he did that well enough on his own. You were the spy, the assassin, a card near the bottom of a very stacked deck. An observer, time and time again.

And, as proves inevitable when someone is taught to find loopholes and make observations, they will begin to find chinks in their predecessor's armor. They will learn to ply their skills for their own gain, rather than only on instruction. It is what makes them good at what they do.

You were very good at what you did.

In all of your searching and spying, you put together several pieces. You conducted your own investigations, slipped additional questions into interrogations, took the time to talk to your targets before you killed them.

Their words painted a very different picture than the one you'd been given. They showed that your mother had not been abducted, but had left willingly. May have even opened the door. They showed that Sunhallow was not the first to claim godhood, only the most recent to become so prominent. And that not everyone, as he had claimed, recognized his inherent superiority.

Your father told you that one day, you would become Holy, as he was. The Sun would hallow your bones, bless you, and raise you to take over where he left off. But you knew what he looked like when he was lying, by then. You also knew he liked to tempt others by offering them the idea of his position, his glory. It was bait.

And the day the light finally responded to your call, you realized that you were going to have to take it.

---

When you and Athena find Menace, it's by finding the end of her trail of ducklings - nearly thirty people, milling about in varying levels of distress and shock.

Someone screamed when they caught sight of you, in your distinctive costume, and Athena with her spear and shield of shadows. You sighed, unsurprised, but didn't have time to even start trying to explain yourself before a head rose above the others. And kept rising.

Nearly flat to the ceiling, Menace shot over the heads of her flock, and hurtled into the pair of you to grab you both in a hug.

"Super-strength, super-strength, super-strength," you chant in warning, wanting to come out of this reunion with your trachea intact.

"You saw me ten minutes ago." Athena chides gently, but her heart isn't in it, and she hugs Menace back just as tightly.

“I’ve never been so happy to see a pile of garbage bags in my life.” Menace says, giving you a very careful squeeze. You have time to make an offended noise before she turns her attention back to her mother; “And you - you got shot? I specifically requested you not get shot.”

“The people.” Athena reminds her, nodding towards the shambling mass of mundanity.

“None of them got shot either.” Menace replies mulishly. When Athena sighs, she relents. “No major injuries so far, though some of them are pretty banged up - bruises, scrapes. I think I’ve gotten most of them out by now, unless there’s a basement to this place.”

Athena looks at you, and you shrug. “It would make sense that they did, but the elevator didn’t go down that far, and herding prisoners down stairs gets very annoying very quickly. If there is one, I’m betting it’s maintenance.”

The shambling mass of mundanity has been whispering since you arrived. You could wait for Menace or Athena to soothe them - but you’d rather not.

“Oh, shut up.” You tell them crossly. “If I were here to kill you all I would’ve blown up the place and been done with it. You all get to live and deal with the trauma for the rest of your sorry lives. Lucky you.”

There’s a collective gasp of shocked breath, and the nearest ones edge back from you a little more - but they do go silent.

Athena elbows you in the ribs. “Synovus does have a point about the stairs.” She says calmly. “And the elevator isn’t safe. Have we found an alternative exit?”

Menace sighs, “I could punch through an outer wall and carry people down?”

Athena considers the group size. “That would take some time. And we would be vulnerable during movement.”

“The ground level is secure.” You mention idly.

“Which doesn’t rule out snipers or the two remaining supervillains.” Menace points out.

“You.” Athena says suddenly. “You can make discs of shadow, and you can hold them. You can make one wide enough for them to all stand on, so they can be lowered down together.”

You could also make a slide that curves around the spire all the way down, but you don’t say that part out loud.

“I could.” You concede. “You would be putting their lives in my hands.”

“If you wanted them dead, you’d have killed them by now.” Athena counters. “So time to live up to not wanting them dead.”

You survey the crowd. You have an image to maintain - or, well , partially reconstruct.

“Fine.” You drawl, and stalk closer to the group. You shoo them all to one side, and rest your fingertips on one wall, feeling for the vibration of the rain. “This is the outer wall?”

Athena breaks off reassuring the people to call to you, “It is. Maybe four, five inches?”

You resist the urge to make inappropriate jokes. Someone in the crowd does not. Someone else smacks them on the back of the head. The first person mutters something about stress responses and apologizes.

Experimentally, you lodge a spear of shadow into the wall. It sticks until you dismiss it. You can see a faint gleam of pale light through it.

Well. Shit. Shadows are very adaptable things, but they don’t cut very well - they’re more brute force and occasionally piercing.

Which means you’re going to have to use the light.

Whatever. At least it’s not made of concrete.

You don’t bother to explain yourself to your companions, not with an audience present. Instead, you raise a wall of shadow between yourself and them, thick enough to block the glow of radiance when you summon light to your hands.

A beam would be easiest, here - but it would also be like setting off a beacon. The most subtle would be to use the light as a knife, as you normally do when you have to use it, but that would take forever. So… laser cutter?

You use three sharp, long lines to hack off either side and a new roof line, giving it a shove near the top with your shadows so it doesn’t try and fall inward. Another slash at the bottom cuts it loose. The chunk of metal falls away with a relatively soft screech (which is, still deafening) and drops with the rest of the rain, and your shadow wall.

You reveal yourself again, already turned to face the group, with the rain now drumming on the metal flooring (you may have erred on the side of excess for height) and the wind blowing your cape out dramatically. You gesture to the open air, shadows already weaving a basket to hold a large group of people.

They cannot see you smiling, but they can hear it. It is not a polite or joyful smile. “Your chariot awaits, dear friends.”

—-

No one thanks you for putting a raised edge on the platform.

Menace would’ve caught them, of course, but still. Did your efforts to save them from falling mean nothing?

Had circumstances been different, you might’ve complained about that to Athena, loudly and at length. Instead, you stayed quiet, and kept time in your head as you lowered a herd of sheeple to solid ground.

You stay up in the spire, though Athena rides with them to reassure them, and Menace drifts alongside. Once they’re down, she argues with her mother for a moment. Then she flies back up, carrying Athena.

“Refused to stay put for her injuries?” You remark, having found a chair to lounge in. That actually did take a significant amount of energy, though you’ve done everything you can to disguise that.

“Yes.” Menace grumbles.

“I told her I’d climb the spire by hand if I had to.” Athena says stubbornly. To Menace, she said firmly, “I let someone slow me from coming to you once. Never again.”

“You two are going to have the strangest rivalry.” You said admiringly, to break the tension. Both of them turn to you instead, and even if Menace’s head is covered, you’d bet their expressions are identical.

You raise your hands in mock-warding - and pause as the air shifts again.

There are two people in the hallway. One, the bruised-but-mobile Jester. The other, slumped against a wall and looking much worse for wear, is Dymania.

Menace and Athena both tense, drawing a step closer together in preparation for a fight. You cross one leg over the other at the knee.

"You know, you two are terrible hosts." You call, casually flicking a crease from your costume. "Leaving us alone for so long? Incredibly ru-"

"Shut UP Synovus!" Jester yells, near manic. You can see the whites of his eyes all the way around, even under the mask. "You weren't even supposed to be here! You're retired!"

"Someone doesn't check Twitter." You remark, amused.

"I - What?" Aw, you've genuinely thrown this one for a loop.

"Twitter." You repeat. "I tweeted 'nvm, comma, I'm back' an hour before I arrived." You enunciate each letter in 'nvm' instead of approximating a word.

Athena sighs, "Synovus."

"Yes, honored colleague?"

"Shut up."

You respond by rising, and giving an overexaggerated bow. Dymania yelps and throws themself to one side - because as you straighten, you throw lances of shadow at both of them.

---

The fight really didn't take long.

You're pretty sure the only reason they got Athena or Menace was by threatening the hostages they already had, and you could've wiped the floor with them on your own. You still didn't kill Jester, and even helped cushion a hit he took from Menace.

(The hit wouldn't have hurt him as much as the rebound against the floor. Menace would've been terribly upset to have accidentally killed him.)

(Though, if she or Athena killed him, you wouldn't be in violation of your promise.)

(But - no. You wouldn't do that to either of them. Not now.)

The end of things really came when Athena managed to pin Jester against the wall with her good arm, and you'd managed to herd Dymania away from his companion. He stumbled back again, and wound up crossing into the area where the rain was still falling.

(Lightening up, you noticed. Better finish things quickly then.)

The change was immediately noticeable. Dymania stiffened, clutching at their head with both hands, and tried to run forward out of the rain - only to find you there, walking them back to the edge.

"H- how did-" They cut themselves off, and you nodded.

"How did I know about the rain?" You asked politely, as much taking pity on them as taking the chance to grandstand. "The Silent Ones told me. You know how they feel about Clairvoyants who don't conform."

It isn't really possible for more color to drain from Dymania's face. Instead, they drop to their knees with a groan.

"What?" Menace asks, looking up from where she's trying to convince Athena to trade off with her.

You raise your voice a little, so she can hear you better. "The Silent Ones. An enclave of Clairvoyants, hidden from most of the world. When two clairvoyants cross each others paths, it's like putting two mirrors opposite each other. Endless reflections. They hate it."

You watch Dymania try to stagger back to their feet, and feel no pity. "That includes if one shows up in their own futures. It gives them headaches at best. Sometimes they wind up in comas, if they're particularly unprepared. So one of them eventually hit upon the idea - what if all of them lived together?"

You glance towards the sky, calculating how long you have left. "They live according to a very strict schedule, and interact as little as possible with each other. If everyone does exactly as ordered, there's no need to make predictions. No traps to fall into. They don't force others into it, but they certainly don't like it when someone has plans that conflict with their order either."

"You mean like, someone leaving?" Menace asks, having managed to take half-ownership of keeping Jester pinned. She sounds offended on their behalf.

"No, they can leave whenever they want. Its the ones who want to do something about their enclave - like find it, exploit it, or destroy it - that find themselves suddenly overwhelmed with bad luck. And the chaos of the rest of the world is often too much for them, once they've gotten used to the enclave."

"So its... more like a sanctuary?"

"Yes. And they know you, Dymania. They know that you cannot stand the rain."

"Make it stop." Dymania begs you. You aren't even sure they've been following the conversation - their eyes are unfocused, trying not to see or feel the falling water around them.

"Clairvoyants, as a whole, despise rain." You mention idly. You have not moved. "The randomness involved in where each drop falls - it ties them up into knots. Worse, if they predict how the droplets will feel on their skin. Some of them can filter it out, like white noise - Dymania is not one of them."

You tilt your head, and then turn back to the others. "Very well. Let's go."

Like you know they will, Dymania gives a cry of desperation. They push, once more, to try and make it to their feet. And at the point where their future diverges, they try to draw the handgun Jester had forced them to carry.

You pivot, and in one smooth motion, kick Dymania out of the spire.

"Dy!" Jester cries.

"Yes." You muse. "I suppose they will."

---

The fight goes out of Jester, after Dymania falls.

The three of you drag him up to the roof, at your direction. Once the skies clear, Heather will bring the plane back around, and all of you can reach it easily enough from the highest point. Plus, at this point, it's less stairs to go up than it would be to go back down, and you really don't want to do the disc trick again.

It turns out the roof is less a flat roof, and more of a ring near the top. You notice Menace shudder as you reach it, and tilt your head at her in question.

"They threw hostages over the railing here." She says quietly.

You nod. This explains why neither Menace or Athena protested much, at what you'd done. But you don't protest or labor the point either - instead, you clasp her arm in sympathy, and look up at where the sky is clearing.

"How did you time that so well?" Athena murmurs when you come up alongside her.

"Weatherwitch owed me a favor." You reply casually.

"Weather witch. The Silent Ones. Your council. What else is there, some kind of... Villain union?"

"Well..." You admit, "there is... something of a minion union, though I stay out of their business, mostly."

Athena sighs.

You almost take your helmet off to grin at her. You probably would've, but then you hear Menace, and the sudden tension in her voice as she says, "Mom?"

You both turn immediately - and see Legionnaire, hovering at the railing, and staring at you.

---

You didn't forget Legionnaire existed.

No, really, you didn't - but you did try really hard not to let yourself think about it for too long.

When you had named him (and Athena) as your rivals, you had made your choice based on what you thought was a genuine good in them. They did not hesitate until the cameras arrived. They did not extort or demand. They took some care for collateral when lives were involved, if not property, and they regularly showed up to help with rescue or relief efforts when they could.

And there was the fact that they had a kid.

You'd fought them enough times to know that they didn't mess around to grandstand or showboat. They maintained secret identities fairly well. They weren't like Dazzler, who would try and seduce villains in the hopes of fucking them back to civility. They weren't like White Shadow, who was always high enough when you fought them that you weren't sure they knew what was happening.

The closest, you thought, to real heroes.

So when you'd seen those bruises on Alexandria's arm, that first day, you'd been... surprised. You didn't exactly have the highest opinion of humanity in general, and you'd learned too many early lessons about pedestals and how much they hurt when they fell over on top of someone. But you had expected better of them.

From your observations, conversations with Minerva and Alexandria, and the things they didn't say, you'd pieced together a lot over the last year. That Minerva did have her flaws, but was trying to be better. That her healing factor meant that any bruises or sprains would've healed long before anyone else saw them. That Alex, though wary of Minerva sometimes, had still talked about her when she wasn't around. She almost never mentioned her father, and when she did, it was only questions about how you knew him, or in conjunction with her mother.

You had been worried, at first, that you were conflating him with Sunhallow. A man claiming holiness (the Sun made him Hallow, the Son of Mars) with strength and a following (A cult, a fanbase) and who coerced their child into working for them (Eclipse, Mercury) and who harmed them-

So you hadn't let yourself go out to find him and have it out. On better days, you admitted it wasn't your fight to have - it was Minerva and Alexandria's, if they wanted it. On worse days, you weighed the benefits and consequences of hiring someone versus doing it yourself.

And you had kept a degree of surveillance on him, just in case. Nothing in depth - you didn't know what brand of frozen pizza he bought or his Netflix account, you didn't care if he still had a job or had lost it - but just. General locations. Whether he went out in costume. You had Legionnaire watched, and not Albion.

But sometimes those lines blurred - so you knew that he had started drinking more heavily when Alexandria left. More again, after Minerva. The last two months, he'd seemed to be getting better, but he had stopped going out in costume.

And now he was here, and you had no idea what to do.

---

For what feels like an eternity, you all stand in silence. Athena had been startled into dropping Jester, automatically readying her shield and then stilling herself before she could aggravate her bullet wound any more.

(She still held the shadow set you'd given her, you hadn't found her usual weapons in the spire, though you had personally looked.)

You grabbed Jester, who was glancing back and forth with confused interest.

"Say a word, or try and teleport away." You tell him quietly, head next to theirs. "And I will make Dymania's death seem like a kindness."

Judging by the way he nods, slowly, he also remembers that you technically have Ciaran.

And Menace - oh, Menace - has lifted from the ground, hovering, with her hands curled into fists.

It's Legionnaire who breaks the silence first; "You inherited my powers."

He sounds... proud. Tired. His voice is rough. He's looking at Alexandria as though she is a prized pupil who has shown an aptitude in his favorite subject.

(He doesn't deserve that pride.)

"I have my own powers." Menace corrects him, her voice clipped and short.

Legionnaire moves his hands gently in a faint 'settle down' motion. "Of course." He says quietly. "All yours, Alex."

"Why are you here, Albion." Minerva demands. She's pulled off the Athena mask, and glares him down as he looks her over. Notes the shadow-weapons, the injury.

"I saw the broadcast." He explains, gesturing to the spire. "I thought - you needed help."

"We're fine." Minerva says flatly.

It's hard to shift uncomfortably when you're flying, but Legionnaire manages it - as his gaze slides to you.

"Oh, come off it." Minerva follows his gaze, and now sounds heated.

"Can you really blame me, Athena?" He says, and sounds beseeching. "This all started with him, when he took Alex -"

"They." Menace interrupts, nearly strangling the word. "Synovus is 'they,' not 'he.'"

Legionnaire bites his lip, flicks his eyes away, then back again. "Fine." He says, though his calm is less even now. "They took you, Alex. And then they took your mother, too."

"I left of my own free will." Alexandria has risen now, a little further up. Not quite even with her father. "And my name. Is Alexandria."

There's a certain exasperation in Legionnaire's expression that he can't hide fast enough. Changing tactics, he looks to Minerva again instead, "Athena, think about it. Synovus changed you! You know they used to say he - she, they - had manipulative powers. They've kept you isolated, and now let you get captured just so they can sweep in to save you-"

"Synovus." Minerva grits her teeth, "Did not make me move several hundred miles inland, away from my family and the source of my powers. Synovus did not discourage me from getting involved in the community, in case I accidentally gave our identities away. Synovus-" She has taken a step forward, with each line, and the tip of her spear is slowly lowering to point towards him. "-did not hurt my daughter."

Legionnaire exhales, "So did you." He points out. "It happens, it's not anything unusual - its how kids learn! I-"

"I am ashamed of that!" Minerva shouts. Alexandria has sunk an inch. "We were supposed to be better, Albion! We talked about trying to save cities, to save the world, and we couldn't even save our own daughter from ourselves!"

"No one is perfect." Legionnaire deflects.

Minerva points her spear at you. You do not flinch. "I have lived with them for over a month." She says, with a steely calm. "I have seen those who live with them. I have seen how they are with Alexandria." There's a subtle emphasis on the last half of the name, a pointed correction. "They provided me medical care without blinking, and though I have yelled and raged and attacked them, they have never raised a hand against me while I was in their house."

Legionnaire scoffs, "So Synovus learned to play nice for a while, that's not -"

"It's more than you ever managed." Minerva says with venom.

There is a silence then, deep enough that the entire spire could fall into it and further, swallowed by a negative space that never ends.

Finally, you speak again, but only when you are certain your voice is under your control. "The plane is here." You say calmly. "Someone should make sure this one-" You jostle Jester, "-is received properly."

There is a two-fold offer in the statement, and one you know both Minerva and Alexandria hear.

Tell me to leave, and I will.

Because you will, if they want. You are party to this story, but it is not yours. It will hurt you, and you will worry, but you know about closure and what it can take to find it.

Tell me to take care of him, and I will.

One more death will not be a burden on your conscious. Not when you feel responsible that he was allowed to continue - that you have protected this man for years. Logically, you know that's ridiculous. It isn't necessarily Logic that wants to kill him.

This pause is shorter, lighter. Minerva whirls on you, searching. You wait for the protest - that she can fight her own battles, and you should fuck off before she comes to her senses and fights you again, a villain at the scene of a crime.

Instead, she glances at Alexandria, who is still hovering, still staring at Legionnaire.

"Alexandria." Minerva says softly. "Our priority is still the people."

"Yes." She responds automatically. It takes her another moment to move, to shake herself out of her paralysis. "I can carry you both."

You know that does not include you.

"Athena, don't -" Legionnaire starts.

You ignore him, and look at Alexandria. "Menace." You address her by the title, helping knock her out of it a little more.

(Yes, remember - you want to tell her, - you are more than his daughter. You have stood in a room full of powerful people and held your own, and more.)

"Lady Synovus." Menace returns. You know it's specifically to spite Legionnaire's earlier assumption that you were male.

"As Legionnaire is your rival -" You ignore Legionnaire again when he starts to interrupt, raising your voice to talk over him, "- it is your jurisdiction as to what measures I can take."

The formality is a shield. You hate to ask this of her, to force her to say - but even if you weren't bound by the rules you'd created, you need to know. If she asks you not to hurt him... well, you'll try.

Alexandria pauses, watching Minerva. Minerva looks back at her, meeting her gaze through the helmet.

"It's your decision," She tells her daughter, "But I will stand by you, no matter what you decide."

"What's this about 'rivals'?" Legionnaire tries to interject.

Alexandria stiffens, as though she might yell at him, and you brace yourself to have to intervene - but instead, she just reaches up and removes her helmet.

Alexandria looks her father square in the face as she says, "Lady Synovus, I give you leave to do as you feel appropriate. No restrictions."

"You are certain?" You ask, because you want her to be sure.

"I am." Her voice doesn't waver.

Minerva takes Jester from you, frowning to remember that he's here, and he's overheard all of this. Alexandria drifts backwards, to gently gather both her mother and the defeated villain into her arms, before going up.

Legionnaire tries to follow - but can't, as you've already got a shadow wrapped around his ankles.

You slam him back down with relish.

"No." You say, your voice chilly, "You are not invited into their lives anymore, Legionnaire."

"And you get to decide that?" Legionnaire demands, trying to slice through your shadow. You tighten its grip in answer. "You get to decide I can't talk to my wife, my son-"

You are glad Alexandria is out of earshot.

"You have never had a son." You say harshly. "And Minerva is not yours in any capacity. You have had months to figure this out, Albion. Time's up."

He seizes on your word choice. "Figure it out - so you did do something! You took my family from me!"

The words, similar to the ones Minerva had yelled at you only a day earlier, make a sheltered part of you ache. But, you remind yourself, she did defend you. She trusts you.

Granted, looking at Legionnaire, still trying to find a way out of your shadows, you admit the bar is pretty fucking low.

"You did that yourself, you idiot." You hiss. "You drove Minerva away. You refused to accept your child. I am not the reason your life is terrible, Albion. You are."

He straightens, and you recognize the arrogance that returns to his posture. He still thinks you're trying to fool him. That he is correct. And he will not be swayed.

"Say whatever you want, Synovus!" He yells, "You won't keep me from the ones I -"

This time, it's a shadow that shuts him up - drawn out of his throat and coiled to serve as a gag. His eyes bulge. He did not know you could do this.

With a flick of your wrists, the shadows holding him down are gone - and replaced with chains of brilliant light. They drag him down, relentless, scorching the skin they touch, until he is pinned to the floor.

"I believe." You say, as you pick your way over to him. "That the missing word there is 'love.' But I am going to choose to believe you were going to say something else - because everything you have said today, Albion? It is not love."

You stare down at him. "You came here. You knew where they were. The lives in peril were of no consequence until it was Minerva and Alexandria. You did not come to save them. You came to try and make them listen to you again."

He may not be listening, but it doesn't matter. You do love a good monologue, and this particular serpent has been coiled in your chest for a long time.

"That isn't love, Albion." You tell him softly. "It's obsession. Possession. You don't respect them enough to consider that they have opinions and wants different than your own. And they deserve so much better."

You pick up the spear that he'd been forced to drop, and twirl it idly. He redoubles his attempts to struggle, to escape - he's always been so strong, but you have always been stronger.

You are very tempted to cast your powers aside here. You want the satisfaction of feeling his bones break beneath your hands, the visceral feeling of grabbing and tearing away. You want to make him suffer.

You want to look for a key that will give Alexandria and Minerva their happiness back.

But you know that those keys don't exist, by now. And you do not need to make yourself more of a monster to kill this one.

"They did love you, at one point." You muse. "And in another world - who knows? Maybe that would have been enough."

You plant one foot on his chest, and lean in. The tip of the spear rests on his throat, and finally, Legionnaire goes still.

"But redemption's never been my style." You hiss.

You slide the spear home.

---

A week after you return to business, you lead Alexandria and Minerva to a secluded part of the island.

The beach is shallow here, particularly at low tide. You and Minerva slosh through water up to your shins. Alexandria drifts over instead, occasionally splashing her feet in the water.

"Not much further." You assure them, though neither has shown signs of complaining. You are nervous. This place is not sacred to you, but it still has power over you.

There is a sea cave of black rock, out of the way. It does not tunnel into the rest of the island very far - a few hundred yards, that's all. A lava tunnel once, long since collapsed, and the inside filled by now with sand.

You pause at the entrance, staring at the void of perfect shadow. You love the shadows - they have always protected you, and you know this one does too - but you do not want to dive into its embrace. You want to run from it.

You clear your throat, "In here."

Carefully, you summon a small globe of light. The three of you (okay, the two of you) pick your way carefully through the cave's unsteady footing, until eventually the ground rises, becoming smooth stone instead of rocky black sand.

There isn't much ornamentation, here. Just a marker, in the form of a rock, carved with the sigil of the sun.

Minerva stiffens. "That's -"

"Sunhallow's sigil." You croak, and clear your throat again. "Yes. This is - this is his grave."

You stand in silence for a few moments - or at least, if Minerva or Alexandria speak, you don't hear them. You're staring sightlessly at the small obelisk you'd carved, so that you would always know if someone tampered with the body.

You still hate him, decades later.

You still sometimes wonder if you were wrong.

A touch at your shoulder startles you back to the present. Its Alexandria, who is looking at you, and not the grave. "You said that this was your father's grave."

"It is." You make yourself respond, then gesture to the front of the cave. "We should - the water gets higher, later, and I know we don't necessarily have to worry about that, but -"

"But you don't want to be here anymore." Minerva finishes. "That's okay, Synovus. We don't have to stay."

You are silent, until you are back out in the sunlight. It should be the opposite, you think - the sunlight was always his, the shadows were yours. Now he has a lair of shadows, and you seek refuge in the light? You'd accuse the universe of irony, if you hadn't brought this upon yourself.

You are not in costume, today. None of you are. It means that they can see the expressions you have lost control over, as you pace back and forth beneath a clump of palm trees, near the shoreline.

"Sunhallow was my father." You say finally, abruptly. Your shoulders drop. The tension - the weight - isn't gone, but... saying the words didn't hurt. Your throat didn't swell closed before you could force them out. You didn't deflect, equivocate, or dodge.

"Sunhallow was my father." You repeat.

"We gathered that." Minerva says, and you are grateful for her dryness.

"I-" You draw in a breath, and turn, shrugging out of the light wrap you wear. Beneath it is a backless shirt that Alexandria had insisted you buy, for one of your more feminine days. You hadn't had the heart to tell her you never exposed that much skin.

Because on your back, centered on your spine and between your shoulder blades, is a large tattoo of the same sigil. The ink is stark against your skin even before it begins to change. Touched by the sunlight, from the center out, the ink turns a glittering gold.

Hallowed, by the Sun.

You can tell from Alexandria's 'woah' that she thinks it's cool as hell. You can tell by Minerva's sharp inhalation that she knows what it means.

You pull the wrap back into place, and turn to face them.

"I killed him." You say, and you speak quickly, as though someone is going to cut you off and you will never get a chance to tell this story, the one you have never told anyone before. "I worked for him for years, as an informant and spy, but I was too good at what he taught me. I learned things he didn't want me to know - didn't want anyone to know - and I - I learned when he lied. I learned about, about the purges."

When Sunhallow was challenged, he had taken to targeting groups of people. Heroes, villains. Towns. It was purification by sunlight, in great quantities - Hallowing the place, with the Sun.

He did not leave survivors.

You swallow, "He was healed by sunlight." You explain, "So I smothered him with shadows."

You knew he would never let anyone into his rooms after nightfall, when he was most vulnerable. So you'd killed him at noon, when the sun was highest, and you'd have had to be stupid to attack him.

You did sometimes do very stupid things.

"I killed him, and then I packed his body into a trunk, and I brought it out here, and I buried it in the cave where the sun will never touch it again." You are surprised, a little, at the vitriol in your voice.

You hadn't taken any chances, moving him. You didn't know if he could come back from the dead, but you didn't want to find out.

Minerva is staring at you with something like wonder.

"It was you." She said softly. "You were the Eclipse."

You nod, exhaling. "The Heresiarch Heir." You echo glumly. "Patricide. Oathbreaker. Murderer. And coward, besides."

Minerva pushes off the tree she's been leaning on, and reaches for you. "Brave." She says firmly. "No one could stop Sunhallow - but you, you couldn't have been more than twenty when he died."

You laugh, short and hollow. "Sixteen."

Minerva blinks. "I couldn't have done such a thing." She admits. "How...?"

You blow out another breath. "He killed my mother." You say, staring into the middle distance again. "And made me kill Willowsteel."

You do not elaborate on how long it took, or how you knew it had been Sunhallow's hand that had killed your mother. Some things you were not ready to talk about, even now.

"Willowsteel...." Minerva muses, "They had a metallurgy ability, didn't they? Or was it magnetics?"

You still have perfect recall of that list. "Metallurgy, with a particular talent for shaping weaponry." You respond automatically.

And you had known that, even when they'd put a steel knife in your hands. And he had known it too, as you stood over him. But in his eyes, you had seen something like a horrified acceptance.

You had been a child. He could've easily overpowered you, or turned the blade aside. For a long time, you had told yourself that it was because he knew Sunhallow would kill him anyway, and he wanted it to be over.

The day you buried Sunhallow, sitting outside the cavern and watching the sun rise again, you'd forced yourself to admit it - that Willowsteel hadn't killed you, because he would rather have died than hurt you.

Truer than his enemies. A man with faith and belief, even if it wasn't in a god, or a man who pretended to be one.

You couldn't plant willow trees on the island - the climate didn't agree with them - but on one of the estates Sunhallow had once owned, there was a grove of them, in a perfect ring around a monument to all of those lost in the purges.

You spend the rest of the afternoon telling stories, when you could stomach it. They asked questions, sometimes. About your mother, about how you'd scraped yourself back together as a villain under your own power. How you'd drawn the others together, forced some degree of order from chaos in the cape-population explosion after the purges had ended.

You knew that both of them understood.

---

Days later, you are waiting in a room decorated in pure white.

The room is quiet, and you can hear the distant roar of an ocean that is not yours. You sit in the dark, one leg crossed over the other, pretending not to be bored.

When the light flips on, the woman in the doorway stiffens, but tries not to show any other signs of distress.

You lift your head, the black shine of your helmet giving her nothing to work with. Another dark-clad figure waits to one side, a third (though in blue rather than black) is keeping watch outside. She has not noticed them yet, you think. She will be furious about that.

"My dear Tallflawes." You drawl, leaning forward. "We need to discuss some of your more recent... investments."

[And so we come to the end (for now!) - thank you to everyone who's made it this far, whether you've been here since the beginning or are only recently catching up. My goal was to finish this during Pride Month, and I have succeeded! Sum total, VNR is just over 34k words, with Call Me Menace sitting at about 8.5k.]

[And a shoutout to 'daddythedragon' and Daphanae for correctly guessing the show Alexandria was watching last time, which was Murder, She Wrote! (Columbo and Magnum P.I. were good guesses too).]

#synovus #Synoverse #Villains Never Retire #It's Done #The End #Roll Credits #Trying to write this kicked my ass.#But we here now #I have an idea for something else I could do in the Synoverse #But I want to try a different prompt or two first #The goal was variety and writing exercises #not another serial #I say having written a novella.

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the-badger-mole · 1 year

Text

There's A Difference

I think I've said this before- in fact, I'm almost certain I've said this within the last few months- but the reason I can't let Aang's actions be dismissed by his age is because his worst traits are never addressed in canon. The reason why I personally find him very incel-ish is because the grown men who created him and project onto him strike me as incel-ish (and yes, I'm aware that at least one of them is/has been married. Incel is more of a frame of mind than an actual state of being). Aang could have had a growth arc, but instead Bryke chose to either ignore his flaws or make them out to be virtues. I'm judging Aang as a character, not a child. Because Aang is not an actual child. An actual child might have been confronted on the things Aang did. Aang is a character whose creators want fans to think is perfect, even when they themselves introduce the idea he might not be (Aang's being a terrible father is not that surprising to me, but even then Bryke had to scramble to tell us he wasn't actually that bad 🙄)

I am a lot less harsh with Zuko because he actually faced the consequences of his poor decisions. He worked to make amends not only for himself, but for his family. I empathize with his losses and his personal tragedies because the narrative actually cared about how those things affected him in just about every episode, unlike Aang, whose devastating losses are only touched on when they're convenient to that episode's plot. Otherwise, he is the picture of unbothered to the point that I question if he even knew most of the time that he was in a war (the answer, it would turn out in the penultimate episode, was no, apparently not). There's not much I can criticize Zuko on that wasn't already touched on within the show. Why would I judge Book 3 Zuko based on Book 1 Zuko (who btw, I still think was a much better rounded character than Aang in any of the series)?

When it comes to Katara and the misogyny inherent in how she was treated in her canon ship? Well, I can only point to canon and aks to be proven wrong. Katara had very little to do with the development of Kataang during the series, and that little was usually prompted by someone or something outside of her own thoughts and feelings bringing the idea up. Meanwhile, we know from the beginning that Aang likes Katara (well, he likes how she looks anyway). His feelings matter to the narrative: Katara's not so much. Then the disastrous comics where Katara's character from the show is completely stripped from her and she ends up being the cheerleader girlfriend of the Avatar. I know some of that is walked back in the more recent comics, but we already know how it ends for Katara and her kids. Also, the post LoK scramble to give Katara more agency honestly just makes me think that my original assessment of her relationship with Aang was spot on.

Zutara, in my opinion, would have been a great relationship for them both. They would've been just about perfect together, because as hot tempered as they can both be, they also both get really good at communicating with each other, which is something that Katara never really has with Aang. That's why it doesn't surprise me to find out how dysfunctional their family is. Katara and Zuko know how to work together as a team. In a relatively short time, they got comfortable opening up to each other. They are both passionate to the point that they can be really hot-headed, but they are both also extremely empathetic and compassionate. They are a couple that would've helped each other grow, and would have been so much more interesting than anything that happened with their actual canon relationships.

I get that there are people who would rather believe that Aang could outgrow his selfishness. That's totally valid, and has made for some great stories. However, I don't think saying the way he was written in canon has shades of incel is wrong. Especially by Book 3. I could see that guy growing up to be a viciously obnoxious narcissist. I bet those of us who know an "Aang" IRL can picture that, too.

#atla #zutara #anti aang #anti kataang #incel aang #aang-cel #THE YEAR OF CONTENT!!!!

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